Something Infiltrated

The three of them arrived at the sawmill shortly after they had left the bar and gotten their gear from Ed’s trunk. Everything was as it had been the night before, which made their job getting in a lot easier than they had originally anticipated.

            “Wish me luck,” Ed said as he skulked off in the direction of the gate, where he would assume the position they had planned a few hours earlier.

            “I got this,” Dev said as he skulked away in his planned direction – off to the southern gate which also housed the backup power generators.

            Ian waited for the other two to leave before he headed forward toward a small ground path, and lay still in the nearby bushes to wait for the patrol that would be passing by any moment.

Ed made his way up a huge oak tree across from the main gate and readied an arrow. He then aimed in the direction of a nearby truck, and fired in quick succession at the two back tires, rendering the vehicle useless in case they had a bad getaway.

            He carried on to climb higher, where he marked three mercenaries who was patrolling near the small building, so Ian would know where they were and not go around the corner blindly.

            “Marked,” Ed said, climbing back down the tree and skulked to the other side of the gate, where he got into position near a hole in the fence.

Ian waited patiently for the three-man patrol to pass by before he rolled across the ground path and into the bushes on the side, continuing on toward the same gate Ed had been watching. Once there, he lay still right next to the security office which was manned by one lone security guard, while two others patrolled outside.

            After Ed had made his way down and to the other side, Ian placed a small black tack against the window of the office, ducked back down and, after checking the coast was clear, rolled across the path and back into the bushes where he would circle around and rendezvous with Ed.

            “Planted,” he said as he made his way across.

           

Devon skulked right to the window of the office housing the generator and pulled out his magnum. The weapon was modified with an under barrel EMP remote, capable of stunning and disabling small devices with any direct hit. Dev though, had modified the power output of the small add-on so it would let out so much power it would permanently disable the generator. The only drawback was that he only had one of the devices, and this would be its only use.

            Devon checked out his surroundings, and after seeing only one security personnel in the vicinity of the building, skulked closer, grabbed the merc by the neck and headed back to where he had come from.

            “Believe in ghosts,” he said quietly, choking the man until he passed out cold. Then, continuing to the office, he shot the generator once with the EMP add-on. The little device shorted out, and Dev removed it from his magnum, headed back round the building, and met with Ed and Ian in the bushes near the fence.

            “Generator’s disabled – they won’t have any backup the moment you get Eskom to drop the grid,” Devon said as he arrived at the rendezvous point.

            Ian smiled and looked down at his cellphone, pressed a single button, and counted down silently from five.

            Five seconds later, the entire area blacked out, which caused many of the mercs to start to chit-chat and fiddle with flashlights.

            A few moments later, Ed opened up the signal that emitted from the device Ian had planted, and they listened in on the merc’s short-field communications over their walky-talkies. By the sounds of it, no one could believe that the generator was broken as well.

            “Let’s get in there,” Ian said, motioning for Dev to go first, which he did gladly, followed by Ed, and then Ian himself.

They had made their way around a number of the vehicles, slashed the back tires of the ones Ed had not been able to get at from his earlier vantage point, and made their way around the huge building, dodging a few patrols as they went. They then climbed up the fire escape, and into the first window they could find that hadn’t been bolted shut with security bars or wooden boards.

            Most of the building was one open space with a lot of logs stacked neatly from one end to another, and a few stacked logs in random other places. From their third-floor perspective all of them marked at least three targets on their visors, which also popped up on their partner’s, making it easier to spot potential trouble.

            All in all, there were only 10 mercs inside the sawmill that they could see. Only one of them hadn’t been tagged, though spotting him wasn’t hard. He was the only one at the very top, looking down at the rest of them with his surprisingly large 50 Caliber sniper rifle – something Ed knew would be disastrous to handle without proper planning and focus.

            “These guys aren’t smart, I’ll tell you that,” Ed remarked under his breath as they made their way across the third floor railings to the offices at the other side.

            “I hear you,” Ian replied and ducked inside first.

It took them a good thirty minutes to find out that the thing they were searching for was a small flash drive lodged into one of the ancient PCs. Ian had scanned the device for any potential leads, and automatically found millions inside the flash, all of which were encrypted beyond normal hacking capabilities.

            “This must be it,” Ian said and put it into one of his many pants pockets, zipped it shut, and gestured for the others that they had to get out, steadily, smoothly.

            “So far so good,” Dev said. The moment he did, an alarm sounded.

            “You of all people should know never to say that!” Ed called over the alarm, and hurried toward the nearest window to begin pulling the two wooden boards from it with as much force as he could.

            Ian swore under his breath as he hurried next to Ed and helped him remove the boards. Dev went to the door to keep a lookout.

            “Two, headed this way!” He called, aiming his magnum but knowing that he wouldn’t be able to shoot.

            “Almost there!” Ian shouted back as they got the last board off. “Come on!”

            Ed broke the window and jumped through first, landing on the roof of one of the trucks they had passed earlier. He jumped down and took cover as fast as he could, and fortunately the darkness was on their side.

            When all three of them were out the window and down the truck, they lay low for a moment. A beam of light shone erratically by them. They could hear the mercs bark at one-another in Afrikaans, informing the others that the intruders are outside but out of view.

            Two patrols ran by with their flashlights, barely missing the trio hiding in the long grass.

            “We can stow away in one of the trucks,” Dev suggested.

            “We slashed the tires.”

            “Damn it.”

            “We lay low for a little while longer,” Ian said quietly as another merc came their way.

            The mercenary inspected the truck and noticed the tires. Just as he was about to call out to the others, Ian grabbed him from behind, dragged him over to where they were hiding and incapacitated him. Another one came their way then.

            “One down…” Ed said sarcastically as he moved into position so he could do the same to this merc as Ian had done to the other. Fortunately, the merc ran by and headed around the corner, leaving an opening for the three of them to hurry down the line of vehicles to the fence.

            Two more guards were checking the trucks, but they were quickly disposed of. More guards were lining up at the entrance, which Ian could hear through the receiver he had planted earlier, so they had to create another hole in the fence, which fortunately Ian’s blade handled effectively enough.

They got back to Ed’s car, put the gear back into the trunk and drove home casually, so as to not alert anyone.

Once back at home, JR was out again, only he and heaven knew where. Ian figured that he wouldn’t be at Melisa’s since he hadn’t gone there the past few days, and figured that it was probably over between the two of them.