Chapter 19: The Big Raid

Benton

It was nightfall when we made the move on the commanders base, myself and John stood at the front gate with 4 of the Leaders soldiers backing us up on entry, I looked at John, he was quite clearly not in the right head space to be here let alone leading through the front door. He seemed irritable and uneasy, he was still recovering from everything that he had faced in the last few months. “Are you sure you are up for this man?” John looked at me, “if I’m being totally honest not really, but I need to be here so I will be, I wont do anything stupid don’t worry.” I nodded at him and patted his shoulder “you got this.” We then got the go ahead from the rest of the teams that surrounded the shipping yard the commander held himself up in, we busted through the gate and unloading on all the soldiers that guarded the place, we made up ground fast slowly linking up with other squads as the raid took place we searched containers, warehouses, the main office and he was nowhere to be found, John spoke up. “Where is this fucking bastard, he must not have even been here, that mother fucker lied to u-“ a bullet then flew through Johns hip on the left side dropping him to the floor, “TAKE COVER!” I yelled as everyone ducked behind every piece of cover available “I can’t see him!” someone else yelled out, I looked at Johns wound and where it would have come from, I tracked its trajectory to the roof of a big pile of shipping containers. “He is on the roof of that pile of shipping containers, take them down!” I dashed over to John, he was keeping pressure on his would and he seemed rather unphased at the prospect of a potentially lethal blow. “Are you good man?” I yelled over the gunfire as knelt down next to him, “No I’m not fucking alright, I’ve got a fucking fragmented bullet in me.” I couldn’t help but be amused by the tone in which he said It, I then dragged him behind the same piece of cover I was using before. “Okay John stay here, I’m going to go fuck these dudes up.” John who seemed only interested in not dying just looked back up at me and uttered the Phrase “Yeah fucking whatever Cunt.” I then cleared the metal barrier I was using as cover and made a push towards the containers, taking out the ambushing force slowly but surely with the rest of the friendly forces clearing the area out, forcing them into a retreat.

We swept the area, checking for any sign of hostiles, and the commander but there were none, I made my way back to John who had just finished being patched up. “How are you feeling mate?” I asked him, he then looked at me with that face he made before saying something fucking dumb. “Oh you know about as good as someone can be who just got shot in the hip, dude could have shot my dick off!” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Fucking hell.” I stated while shaking my head, I could tell John was entertaining himself more than he was anyone else. “I presume you didn’t end up finding the commander?” John said it with mild disappointment, “Nah, dude must have legged it when we made a push.” John’s composure then broke “We’re never going to find this guy, wish I could have gotten him after the attack but I was reckless, too wrapped up in my own emotion, for the first time in my life I was fighting on emotion rather than logic and It caused me to fail.” I looked at him with Sympathy, I knew what he was going through, but not to the extent he was, he was closer to her than I was and that made things harder for him. If I was being honest, I had already moved on from her death, at least the opening phase of it, I still wanted revenge for her death, but I wasn’t letting it hold me back anymore. “You did as good as you needed, you saved my life, I would have died if you didn’t show up. And the only reason you got there was through sheer hatred of him. You couldn’t have saved her, but you have saved others in your attempt in revenge.” John sighed “I guess you’re right, I’m trying to get back on top of things but its hard for me, something about what happened, it affected me.” Knowing John the way I did I knew it was his bid for control is what affected him, he liked to have everything work as it was designed too, It was one of his few weaknesses and it held him back from being what would be the best leader in history. “You need to learn to let go of things you can’t control, you won’t always be able to solve a problem, some problems just can’t be solved.” John looked down covering his emotion, he knew at heart I was right. I pat his shoulder and made my way back to the rest of the crew, “Is he all good?” Jade asked worried “He is fine, bullet didn’t hit any veins or arteries he will be all good.” Jade nodded “We searched the area and the roads out, but he was here because I found this.” Daniel then held out a Tablet with a tonne of information “This was the commanders, must have forgotten or didn’t have time to grab it.” I took it from Daniel and browsed its hard drive for anything useful, there was an abundance of intel on it ranging from Emails, maps, battle plans, mission logs and most importantly, safehouse locations. “This is too good to be true, talk to the Leader and get all the resources you need to hit these locations and find him, if they are traps make sure you have a backup plan on all missions, take down his entire operation and he will eventually turn up.” Everyone nodded “I will send you all of the intel I can, now go home, we begin planning tomorrow.” I heard John get up in the background. “I thought you said you weren’t a leader?” John said whilst chuckling “One, you should be seated and two, I’m not I gave a simple instruction, I’m not in charge here, the leader of this side is.” John grinned, “You controlled the group, they listen and look up to you, and even during the fight you were giving orders.” I couldn’t help but smile “Well in that case, I order you to go the fuck back to base and rest up, we have a big couple of weeks ahead of us.” John nodded and left with the others, I followed not long after.

John

After returning back to the alternate faction’s home base I basically slept in the medical bay for 3 days until I was cleared fit enough to return to battle, I stayed another day though to collect my thoughts and make sure I was ready mentally I was still having flashes of things that weren’t there, hearing things that weren’t there, seeing things that didn’t exist. But the big improvement was I wasn’t going into full on insanity trips, so I deemed myself well enough to continue the fight to the commander, I wasn’t going to stop, I needed vengeance for what he had put everyone at battle school though. This wasn’t just for vengeance now either, we were stopping another global conflict. Who would have guessed that 5 teenagers would be leading the charge of stopping a global conflict, because if anyone had of told me 6 months ago that I was going to be at this point I’d call them a fucking idiot. It didn’t matter now because I met up with Benton in the war room to plan our next play. “What did I miss?” I asked in a kind of chirpy and unserious way “we have been raiding supply depots and safehouses, we have not been able to locate the Commander, but his operation is slowly falling apart.” He seemed confident in his army’s destruction “this fight is far from over, the commander has been building a strong army for what could be the better part of a decade, we can’t get overconfident.” Benton nodded “well anyway our next mission is ambushing one of the commanders safehouses, its in a dense forest and it said to be heavily guarded, place is a fortress, traps everywhere. We need to be on our game with this one.” I looked at Benton sternly “Let’s give them hell!”