Operation: Urgent Gambit

Day -5:

ASmall Military Installation, Nowheresville, U.S.:
New mission briefing. Another small banana republic is having issues with an insurrection. Yes, drugs are involved, and soon, so shall I. Our job will be to stop the rebels, contain the drug lords, and restore peace.

Day -2:
Hit up the Supply Sergeant. Got all my gear. Rifle, ammo, crypto, radios…. Enough stuff to weigh down a pack mule. And it’s all for me. At least most of it stays put at base. But now they won’t even help me load it onto the truck. Wankers.

Day 0:
Ooh, business class flight this time. I guess those miles from other places have paid off a little. Too bad it’s a short one.

Day 1 – Cortanica:
What a wonder full morning. Landed on this small equatorial island near South America. And I hate it already. Heck, stepping off the plane my glasses fogged up. What a great place to be.

Day 2:
Made it to our happy little staging area. What a dump. Just a CP hut, a few ancillary buildings like barracks, mess tent, and stuff. Not even a proper comms setup. I hate these underfunded ops.

Day 3:
What a wakeup. Get up, get dressed, then get told that a bunch of reinforcements have just been airdropped in. That, and recent information says the enemy is moving troops into the area to probe us. Had to round up some people for base defense. Then the enemy hit. Not all that hard, but enough to show us they’re interested. During the defense, I got tagged, but the medic found it to be only a flesh wound. Not too bad, and I was at least mobile in a few minutes.

Day 6 – High Eagle Downed:
What a way to get woken up. Early this morning, somebody lost a U-2 spyplane over the country. And now, we’ve got to find the ejector seat. Turns out that a vital piece of equipment was attached to it. No word on the pilot. Just find the seat.

Day 7:
Well, good news and bad. First, we recovered the data storage unit from the ejector seat. Great. Some nice intel on it. But, the enemy is in control of a large section of the country. Predominantly the western half of the island. And they’re fighting us every time they get close. They seem to have a lot of young teens out there with guns. Makes them easy to eliminate, but they’ve got so many.

Day 9:
What a coup. Today, leading a group of troops, we were able to take the second bridge over the river. Not only did we eliminate the guards, but a couple of them were still alive. Quickly, we disarmed and searched them. While I didn’t find any real intelligence of value, I was able to recover an encrypted enemy radio. With this, we were able to begin monitoring their comms. This will help out immensely. But when returning with this vital information, I got grazed by a round. Not much, but had to drag myself back to base with another guy.

Day 11:
The enemy is starting to play hardball now. They made a serious try for the base. Major fighting going on. I spent a good amount of time dragging around wounded. Then I got hit, but again, just a grazing wound. After getting back in the fight, we were finally able to repulse them. Then we pushed them back hard to the west. They seem to be getting better.

Day 15 – Weapons Cache:
Intel has reports of enemy weapons caches all around the island. We’ve been tasked to find them, and destroy them. We quickly found one. Just for grins, we brought it back to base to loot it. Then we blew it sky high. Regretfully, we never found the others. They still seem to be in enemy hands. That won’t be good.

Day 19 – REMBAS:
The higher ups have determined we need more intel on enemy movements. So now we’ve been tasked to place a number of these REMBAS sensors along suspected movement routes, and a relay unit. We split up our forces, and began running the sensors out. The relay unit was easy to drop off. After that, we split the unit up to go along both sides of the river. My unit took fire rather quickly. While hit during the fight, we held out long enough for the guys on the other side to make the river. As I was medevaced to base, they planted the sensor, and then got hit hard. But we did what we had to. Word is two of the other three were also planted.

Day 20:
Today we pushed Northwest to try and place the last sensor. As soon as we hit an open field behind the airfield, the rebels open up on us. I was stuck behind a small wall for a while, until a round took me down. Took a while for the medevac to come and get me. But in the end, we got the final sensor placed.

Day 21:
Word came down that a few members of the partisan anti-rebellion group wanted to meet with us. Oh was that a fiasco. Our group got caught out in the middle of nowhere, and slaughtered. But at the same time, we captured a ranking member of the Cortanican military that was sympathetic to the rebellion. He had a very nice statement on him. It’s a good thing it never made it out on the radio. That would have been very bad.

Day 23 – Bridge blowing for Fun & Profit:
Welcome to our next fun escapade. They tell us to blow the northern bridge over the river. Load me, the engineer, and one other guy up with C-4, and tell us to go do it. To start the party, we called in an airstrike. Due to a comm blackout, we didn’t know that the bridge was down, and prepped to blow it the hard way. Was that ever a boondoggle. They were just waiting for us. Didn’t make it that far and I got tagged. Medic patched up the graze, and we retreated. As we got ready for the second push up the other side, we found out that the airstrike worked. We then did a fighting retreat.

Day 24 – REMBAS Return:
We now have to recover the REMBAS sensors. Turns out that they don’t transmit all the info at once. While out assisting in the recovery operation, and monitoring enemy comms, I found that our base was under attack. Quickly turning around, I rushed back to base. The rebels had gotten inside the base camp itself. And had no rear guards. I just walked in, pulled out my .45, and started blasting away. Got two of them before they even figured it out. Then one of them got wise, and pulled a gun on me. We shot each other at the same time. But a medic was able to get to me in time.

Day 25 – Double Duty:
Today, we got given two missions at once. First, the enemy has finally gotten their mortars operational. We need to blow them up. On top of that, sources report a possible drug lab close to the airport. We’ve been given demo charges to blow either the mortars of the lab up. We started with the drug lab search. Well, we never had a chance. The rebels have that area locked down hard. Getting close to the airport, we came under ferocious fire. Figures, got hit again. But the medic found it to only be a flesh wound, and patched me up in a few minutes. From there, we fought just to pull back. We accomplished the fighting retreat….just.

Day 26:
While out strolling around base, we heard this whistling sound. Just in time for an enemy mortar strike to hit. I got a good chunk of shrapnel in me. Had to get medivaced out. What a bad day.

Day 27:
During the early evening, the enemy laid into us hard from all sides. I helped fight out to the east, then we swung around to the north and came in on their flank. Turns out this was a bunch of green recruits. Once on the flank, we overran them rather quickly. As we finished the mopping up, we came across even more wounded troops. While their cell structure makes it hard to gather any hard intel, I found another encrypted radio on the enemy. But this one was on a different channel and setting. Gives us a lot more intel capability on enemy comms.

Day 28:
It’s early morning, and we’re going back to the airport and the drug lab. We need both the lab taken out, and the REMBAS sensor near it. As we passed an old bunker, we came under fire again. Even trying to flank around we got lit up. Once again, I got tagged. Good thing the medic was next to me. Just a bandage on the graze, and back in I went. Only to go further around and get hit again. This time, I had to be medivaced out.

Day 31:
Interesting information today. While listening in on enemy channels, I found they are pulling a number of forces to guard the “White Tower”. From previous interrogations, we’ve figured this to be the airfield control tower. Well, good thing for F-15s. We called in an airstrike on it. Boom. Not sure we got much, but the post bombing assessment shows close to a dozen enemy casualties. Not to bad for a single Mk-82.

Day 34:
Flash mission. A new way of dealing with enemy drug production has been planned. As we can’t make it to the area of the drug lab, we’re getting in some new equipment. It will be airdropped to us. All we have to do it retrieve it. While one team does that, I took a small group and went to reinforce the group that just got into a firefight down the road. There, we got involved in one heck of a firefight, and it got lit up. The enemy almost captured me, but I was medivaced out in time.

Day 35 – Defoliant Bombs:
Turns out what we got dropped was a new type of defoliant designed to destroy cocoa plants. We quickly set out to place them around the island. On the east end, we planted the first one close to a storage depot. From there, we came to the river. After watching a few enemy patrols go by, we crossed the river and headed due north. On the northern most east corner, we placed the second bomb. Until then, we had it easy. The trek along the north shore was fraught with chance enemy sightings. At one point, we sighted the enemy moving a cache of weapons to close to their base. While on the coast line, we also found the enemy mortars. We grabbed these to take and blow once we placed the last bomb. Once behind the enemy base, we got to where the bomb was to be placed. Here, we also found a crate of weapons. Our engineer and a couple of guards went out to place the bomb. The rest of us sought out defensive positions. As I took cover behind a mound, I noticed something strange hidden in the grasses. Turns out, I’d found a Stinger missile. As I brought that down to pile of weapons to be destroyed, I noticed another crate of weapons, and a locker full of ordnance. While grabbing the last two items, an enemy soldier noticed us. As we laid down covering fire, our engineer placed a demo charge on the mortars, ammo crates, and Stinger missile. While still returning fire, we blew the cache sky high, then ran pell mell along the coast t get back to base. On the way, an enemy shot me while I lead the retreat. While we wounded him, we didn’t know that he was the enemy leader. As our medic dealt with my grazing wound, the other kept on the path to base. Soon, we had regrouped, we continued. After crossing the river, our commander and a medic kept on to base, while the rest of us prepared for a delaying action. Because we could hear the enemy forces both on their net, and through the jungle, coming after us. After passing over the river, we moved quickly back to base. While moving back to base, we were notified that we were extracting. Our extraction point was close to base in a open field to the west. Once back at base, we got caught in base defense, while trying to get everybody to the extraction point. Providing covering fire, a number were able to make it to the extraction point. I made it just in time to get on the last chopper out.

Day 36 – U.S.S. Constellation:
Once we extracted, we relocated to the U.S.S. Constellation, which was providing air support during the operation. Here, we proceeded to learn what had happened. Only 13 men made it out. But we’d accomplished much in the last mission. Hopefully, we’ve done a lot of good in stabilizing the government of Cortanica.