Project Venom #Watty's2016

Africa

I didn't want to waste anytime in leaving for Africa. It wasn't because I actually wanted to go on the mission, more feeling like absolute shit that my teammates got the short end of the stick, where as I got of easy. It wasn't even a sort of "I feel sorry for myself", more so it was a, "how come it affected them so seriously, but barely knocked me out?", Kind of feeling.

"Stop laying the guilt on yourself", my Dad told me as we geared up. My Dad had been given a Venom uniform, but he used his own vest, drop pouches and gun along with a beanie hat, "you didn't have any control over it son."

"I know, I know", I said, "It's not guilt so much as it as gnawing, why? For the life of me I can't figure out why the worst it seems to have done to me is knock me out."

"Something in your DNA?", Mercury asked, "look at me, it didn't do shit to me but get me high."

"And see fire", John said, "don't forget about that."

"But it was still a result of getting high as a kite", Mercury said grabbing his secondary weapon, a Venom project modified Mini 14 that was desert tan, his M220 wouldn't blend in well, being white and all.

"So it was spewing cocaine into the air?", Vortex asked as she pulled a heavily modified Barrett XPR 338 off the rack of her armory cell.

"Green said it was some weird ass powdered spider venom or shit like that" Mercury said, "I don't know, I'm 11, cut me some slack."

"11?", Austin asked as he sheathed two wicked looking, serrated long swords and picked up a Sg334, Venom's go to shotgun, with an EoTech sight, "that's kinda fucked up. Who sends an 11 year old to war?"

"He didn't send me", Mercury said, "I chose to join, so did everyone else."

"Fair enough", Austin said.

The fly into Africa was done on John's Chinook, as had all of our flights. It was deadly boring for me, as there wasn't the sound of the Rotary Turbines the Hybrid had, so I spent most of the 5 hour fly half asleep. It wasn't as bad as it would have been without AC, so I was at least thankful. On the other end of the flight path, the forward operating team, lead by a man named Allen, had set up a three tent base. One big one I assumed was the command center, the other appeared to be the garage and armory and the third was the mess hall and barracks. Everything was neat and organized, but best of all well hidden and thermally shielded. Allen was waiting on a makeshift landing pad with breakfast, a familiar pair of Nissan's that had had a lot of work done since the last time we were in this part of the world and a weird ass dune buggy strapped with ammo crates, duffle bags, weapon attachments, what have you, but I didn't see any place to drive it.

"What's going on with the dune buggy over there?", I asked as I bit into a piece of chicken.

"It's a Mk 1 Mule supply unit", Allen said, "Morningstar and your friend Carlos radioed ahead with some new intel and in light of this, I feel it will be essential. In the coming weeks."

"Weeks?", I asked.

"Come", Allen said, "I'll give you all the details."

I followed Allen into the tent where he had a map laid out. The map covered some 40 square miles and ended at the coast. It was dotted with all kinds of small little structures and a couple large ones, particularly at the coast. Most of the small structures were marked in either yellow or orange, while the large ones were almost all red with some green around them.

"This map dropped in by Sat Capsule minutes before you arrived", Allen said, "the small structures you see are tribal villages, marked in either yellow, to indicate low militia presence, or orange to denote high. The main one I'm concerned about is about a ten minute drive from here."