Operation Fortnight

Veir: Die Verdreht-Farbband

10949 0900hrs. 

Somewhere deep in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil. 

As usual, the intelligence report was wrong. No surprise there. 

"Misairu-sama." Once again, it was that little voice whispering in my ear. 

The signal was sketchy at best and I was geniunely impressed by that much. Chinmoku has certainly made improvements to the reception system in the last two years. The last time I was this deep in the rainforest, the transmissions we sent back and worth had the quality of of a HAM receptor. Right now there was an uncomfortable static sound somewhere behind her voice that almost overpowered it, but other than that, she could be heard and understood with some concentration. I didn't need to bother trying any unnecessary tricks in order to be able to talk back to Tokyo, as the only people within earshot were all colleagues, but that didn't stop me from being as whispery as I could. Given the nature of the mission, there could be all manner of ambush or clever trap waiting for us up ahead, and any reason to tip our hand to the enemy was no reason at all. 

"You finally found us?"

"It was simple. I just had to wait for you to find a spot where you weren't totally covered in canopy."

I looked up and realised that there were, in fact, no trees directly above us. It made for a pretty neutral moment, being good in that I had actually begun to miss being able to at least see the misty sky which was currently emptying it's luggage onto us and finally being able to do so was uncannily uplifting, but it was also bad in that there were no longer ten layers of leaves which kept the breadth of the rain from falling directly onto us. I had yet to decide if I was okay with that or not. I will say that the lightning in the distance was pretty cool though. 

The good thing about being in the middle of a valley was knowing just from the look of it that it was obvious that human hands had been at work here. The sheer sparceness of the trees was the first indicator that something was amiss. Then you have the recently tilled dirt/mud, and then the clear axe marks on the stumps which poked up out of the ground and the equally etched up logs which laid strewn about not far away. Several holes had been dug, presumably to get after what little remained of the stumps which rested, wrapped in chains not far away. Several bits of trash, crumpled beer cans and squashed cigarette butts were tossed to and fro without much concern. The distinct lack of animals was a pretty big tell as well. 

Oh, and the four small, hastily made shanties strewn built in a cluster in the middle of it all helped a bit, especially with the single white pickup truck parked in front. 

"False alarm, guys," Rivets jumped to the conclusion,"It's just your typical wood poaching camp. Nothing to worry about here." And, just like that, all the other agents began to stand and walk off. 

And, I was just about to come to that same conclusion and join them, but I decided to look it over once again, and something special caught my eye.

"Hold," I hissed, making the lesser officers freeze in place and crouch back down under the cover of a four foot thick felled possumwood tree. "You missed something." 

It took them a moment to figure out to what I was referring to, which didn't surprise me a bit, but choosing to be patient with them, I gave them the full moment of searching about so I could take that moment to unzip my backpack, pull out the individual pieces of my rifle, and click them into place with a metallic CHIK, a sound I absolutely love more than any other sound in the world, before I finally just showed it to them outright. 

Just when I had finished clipping the barrel to the body and sliding in a fresh magazine, completing the weapon, Sierra finally rejoined us, having climbed a tree to the left of us to get an eagle's perspective of the situation and had only just now slid down the trunk to rejoin us, pointed out what the boys had overlooked, saving me the effort.