03-22-2014, 08:55 AM
Jacques' attention seemed to be everywhere at once. Even on ground level, surrounded by an angry crowd and with far too few men to really make a difference should their 'shock and awe' approach fail, he seemed entirely unruffled. In his element. He loved being this close to the action, standing on the line of contact, feeling the way things moved. Battle and war was a living thing in his mind; it could be understood and observed as could any other organism. It had mannerisms and tells, and he got no end of thrill being able to sense them.
His Landwarrior's were crowded with data feeds that never quite seemed to impair his ability to observe his surroundings with his own two eyes. There was a fleeting moment of concern as the crowd didn't scatter as energetically as he had hoped, but that changed when the first fireball arched towards them.
One of his men barked 'Molotov!' and they reacted accordingly, spacing out further. Molotov's were terrifying weapons, in that they were cheap, easy, and effective both for actual damage and psychological warfare. Humans were instinctively afraid of fire, and more so of being on fire.
One glance told Jacques, and probably his men as well, that what was coming towards them was no molotov. It didn't look right. More like a fireball, maybe like you'd see in some fantasy flick. But there was no time to try to think it through; the mind made connections between possible threats and known threats. They didn't know what this was, but they knew what it almost looked like and responded in that fashion. One man spun, grabbing the female reporter from where she sat in the vehicle the ball of fire was arching towards and tried to haul her out of the vehicle before it could strike. There was no chance he could actually do it, but he tried anyway.
Then there was the sudden whirlwind, dust and water, that engulfed the fireball and it puffed out in a cloud of steam and smoke. The Legion men all paused for a split second, their minds racing to understand what had happened, but they all quickly tucked their confusion aside and returned to the task at hand.
Trackers marking the locations of his men relative to himself flashed a brief warning regarding Cpl Ime. The man had darted away from the vehicles and into the crowd. One brief glance told him why; Reed had bolted that way, and Ime had the task of keeping her safe. The clerk didn't even hesitate.
A flick of the eye and Jacques had a display from Ime's Landwarrior camera. A crowd, Reed was in a corner, being attacked. He had never for a moment believed the woman was a reporter's assistant. Now he just had the evidence. No number of hours in self defense classes could teach a person to handle themselves that well when being attacked by a crowd. Reed was some sort of spook.
Ime was no stranger to this sort of thing; every member of the Legion had riot control training. He was in fast and aggressive, baton out. Two more Legion men received waypoints and were moving to enter the crowd to liberate Ime and that damn idiot, Reed. The worrying part was when Ime handed over his sidearm; live rounds were going to make all of this a nightmare.
And a nightmare it became. Ime's vitals flatlined suddenly, his head pitched back and his Landwarriors went dark. Jacques could hear the gunshot from where he was standing, and with it everything changed. The crowd was already in a blind panic, fleeing in every direction from the fireballs, but now someone was firing real bullets. It all spiraled into chaos. People were being trampled and crushed in the crowd, and the Legion men were forced to fall back into a tight circle around the vehicles, the badly injured cameraman strapped into a collapsible hard-frame stretcher set near the base of one of the vehicles.
The Legion men used their shotguns as barriers now, pushing back against the crowd aggressively to keep themselves and their charges from being trampled. Jacques stood on the line with them, throwing the occasional punch or shove to keep things moving, all the while watching the tracker icon of Ime's GPS as it moved further away.
Savages were taking his dead. That would not stand. But there was nothing to be done about it now.
The crowd thinned and abruptly vanished, leaving those that had fallen in the chaos, dead and wounded, behind. "Provost. You will have Mr Ime in Casablanca by the time I return from Dubai. Is that understood?"
His tone was deathly serious, a very rarely seen side of Jacques' personality. He did not appreciate his men being disrespected.
The man that approached them was readily identified as Mr Trano. Their current contract holder. The man who's 'assistant' had gotten one of his men killed by her own stupidity. He forwarded the final images from Cpl Ime's camera to Provost Boipelo, isolating a still image of the shooter. The Provost scowled angrily as he directed the rest of the men in loading the wounded cameraman into one of the vehicles, and others took up a hasty cordon around the vehicles, their shotguns quickly swapped out for SMGs.
"Mr Trano. Incidental expenses will be forwarded to you for final compilation of the fee."
He turned slightly to fix a cold eyed gaze at Reed. There was no hint of the happy-go-lucky businessman there. Just professional anger. She had done something stupid, and it had cost his man his life. She knew he knew she wasn't what she said she was. If she had just asked for assistance tracking down her fucking charge, he could have easily coordinated it. Instead, she ran off like some self-obsessed asshole.
He made sure that Trano couldn't see the look he leveled at Reed, and by the time he turned back to the high-profile reporter, his face had returned to a calm exterior. "Toubib Afolayan. Check the injured. Provost. How many can we seat to the link-up with the ambulances?"
"We can post four men to the runners on each vehicle, Sir. Ihejirika can drive lead, and if you drive rear, we can carry 4 wounded seated, or two and one one the second stretcher."
That would mean four of his men riding on the outside of the vehicles, standing on the runners and holding the roof rack, in danger. But it would also add an extra level of protection to those seated within; small arms fire would have to get through his men's armour and flesh to find their way inside. He nodded curtly; get it done.
Under the squad medic's supervision (Toubib (doctor) Afolayan), three of the most seriously injured people were selected from those laying on the ground near the Legion vehicles and set into the SUVs with the cameraman and female reporter, who was, surprisingly, more concerned about her cameraman then of getting a good scoop.
"Mr Trano. Your assistant is most assuredly good at her job. However, I suggest if you insist on travelling in such dangerous regions of the world, you send her on a few self defense courses. Something to build her personal confidence. She needs to learn how to keep a level head in dangerous situations, or her skatter-brained antics will see more lives cut short."
He played along with her little secret, that she was no reporter's assistant, but he still found a way to chastise the woman for her getting his man killed. A way that, should she argue otherwise, could well be damaging to her disguise with Trano.
"Toubib Afolayan. Forward your triage report."
The squad medic had taken a quick note on observed injuries and the number of dead and wounded still on the street, and Jacques sent that ahead to the appropriate people to assure the police and first responders that they were to link up with.
"Well Mr Trano, I must admit this was not how I had hoped to spend my last day in Mecca. Please mount up. We are meeting police and ambulances a few blocks away, then will return you and your assistant to the hotel. If there's no questions?"
He moved to get into the drivers seat of the second vehicle as his men started herding them all to mount up; they needed to get moving before more trouble could find them.
His Landwarrior's were crowded with data feeds that never quite seemed to impair his ability to observe his surroundings with his own two eyes. There was a fleeting moment of concern as the crowd didn't scatter as energetically as he had hoped, but that changed when the first fireball arched towards them.
One of his men barked 'Molotov!' and they reacted accordingly, spacing out further. Molotov's were terrifying weapons, in that they were cheap, easy, and effective both for actual damage and psychological warfare. Humans were instinctively afraid of fire, and more so of being on fire.
One glance told Jacques, and probably his men as well, that what was coming towards them was no molotov. It didn't look right. More like a fireball, maybe like you'd see in some fantasy flick. But there was no time to try to think it through; the mind made connections between possible threats and known threats. They didn't know what this was, but they knew what it almost looked like and responded in that fashion. One man spun, grabbing the female reporter from where she sat in the vehicle the ball of fire was arching towards and tried to haul her out of the vehicle before it could strike. There was no chance he could actually do it, but he tried anyway.
Then there was the sudden whirlwind, dust and water, that engulfed the fireball and it puffed out in a cloud of steam and smoke. The Legion men all paused for a split second, their minds racing to understand what had happened, but they all quickly tucked their confusion aside and returned to the task at hand.
Trackers marking the locations of his men relative to himself flashed a brief warning regarding Cpl Ime. The man had darted away from the vehicles and into the crowd. One brief glance told him why; Reed had bolted that way, and Ime had the task of keeping her safe. The clerk didn't even hesitate.
A flick of the eye and Jacques had a display from Ime's Landwarrior camera. A crowd, Reed was in a corner, being attacked. He had never for a moment believed the woman was a reporter's assistant. Now he just had the evidence. No number of hours in self defense classes could teach a person to handle themselves that well when being attacked by a crowd. Reed was some sort of spook.
Ime was no stranger to this sort of thing; every member of the Legion had riot control training. He was in fast and aggressive, baton out. Two more Legion men received waypoints and were moving to enter the crowd to liberate Ime and that damn idiot, Reed. The worrying part was when Ime handed over his sidearm; live rounds were going to make all of this a nightmare.
And a nightmare it became. Ime's vitals flatlined suddenly, his head pitched back and his Landwarriors went dark. Jacques could hear the gunshot from where he was standing, and with it everything changed. The crowd was already in a blind panic, fleeing in every direction from the fireballs, but now someone was firing real bullets. It all spiraled into chaos. People were being trampled and crushed in the crowd, and the Legion men were forced to fall back into a tight circle around the vehicles, the badly injured cameraman strapped into a collapsible hard-frame stretcher set near the base of one of the vehicles.
The Legion men used their shotguns as barriers now, pushing back against the crowd aggressively to keep themselves and their charges from being trampled. Jacques stood on the line with them, throwing the occasional punch or shove to keep things moving, all the while watching the tracker icon of Ime's GPS as it moved further away.
Savages were taking his dead. That would not stand. But there was nothing to be done about it now.
The crowd thinned and abruptly vanished, leaving those that had fallen in the chaos, dead and wounded, behind. "Provost. You will have Mr Ime in Casablanca by the time I return from Dubai. Is that understood?"
His tone was deathly serious, a very rarely seen side of Jacques' personality. He did not appreciate his men being disrespected.
The man that approached them was readily identified as Mr Trano. Their current contract holder. The man who's 'assistant' had gotten one of his men killed by her own stupidity. He forwarded the final images from Cpl Ime's camera to Provost Boipelo, isolating a still image of the shooter. The Provost scowled angrily as he directed the rest of the men in loading the wounded cameraman into one of the vehicles, and others took up a hasty cordon around the vehicles, their shotguns quickly swapped out for SMGs.
"Mr Trano. Incidental expenses will be forwarded to you for final compilation of the fee."
He turned slightly to fix a cold eyed gaze at Reed. There was no hint of the happy-go-lucky businessman there. Just professional anger. She had done something stupid, and it had cost his man his life. She knew he knew she wasn't what she said she was. If she had just asked for assistance tracking down her fucking charge, he could have easily coordinated it. Instead, she ran off like some self-obsessed asshole.
He made sure that Trano couldn't see the look he leveled at Reed, and by the time he turned back to the high-profile reporter, his face had returned to a calm exterior. "Toubib Afolayan. Check the injured. Provost. How many can we seat to the link-up with the ambulances?"
"We can post four men to the runners on each vehicle, Sir. Ihejirika can drive lead, and if you drive rear, we can carry 4 wounded seated, or two and one one the second stretcher."
That would mean four of his men riding on the outside of the vehicles, standing on the runners and holding the roof rack, in danger. But it would also add an extra level of protection to those seated within; small arms fire would have to get through his men's armour and flesh to find their way inside. He nodded curtly; get it done.
Under the squad medic's supervision (Toubib (doctor) Afolayan), three of the most seriously injured people were selected from those laying on the ground near the Legion vehicles and set into the SUVs with the cameraman and female reporter, who was, surprisingly, more concerned about her cameraman then of getting a good scoop.
"Mr Trano. Your assistant is most assuredly good at her job. However, I suggest if you insist on travelling in such dangerous regions of the world, you send her on a few self defense courses. Something to build her personal confidence. She needs to learn how to keep a level head in dangerous situations, or her skatter-brained antics will see more lives cut short."
He played along with her little secret, that she was no reporter's assistant, but he still found a way to chastise the woman for her getting his man killed. A way that, should she argue otherwise, could well be damaging to her disguise with Trano.
"Toubib Afolayan. Forward your triage report."
The squad medic had taken a quick note on observed injuries and the number of dead and wounded still on the street, and Jacques sent that ahead to the appropriate people to assure the police and first responders that they were to link up with.
"Well Mr Trano, I must admit this was not how I had hoped to spend my last day in Mecca. Please mount up. We are meeting police and ambulances a few blocks away, then will return you and your assistant to the hotel. If there's no questions?"
He moved to get into the drivers seat of the second vehicle as his men started herding them all to mount up; they needed to get moving before more trouble could find them.