Arabian Nights Part 5
Love, Raid, and Valor
Stretched out like lions in the long waving desert grass at the edge of the camp, the pilots of Wing and Heavyarms stalked their prey. Heero looked through his binoculars at the base in the clearing, and Trowa did the same. Their guide, one of the Maguanacs, was called Sidi, and looked barely thirteen, if that. They were all dressed in light battle fatigues and sand-colored ski masks. The young Arab laid out between them. Heero and Trowa swept their gazes across the cinder-block buildings.
Suddenly, as they studied their target for weaknesses, Trowa spoke up out of nowhere. "Out of curiosity, did L1 send you this mission?"
"L1 knows nothing about it. I'm disconnected from them here," Heero snapped, obviously unsettled by the idea of being separated from his own missions.
"Then why are you here?"
"I could ask you the same question."
There was silence for a few moments. Heero focused his gaze beyond the buildings to the eight mobile suits resting beneath camouflage netting at the base's farther side.
"Heero, did you come here because you care about Quatre?"
Heero snorted. "Feeling jealous, Trowa? No, I didn't. I came because I wasn't completing any other assignment at the time, and the chances of survival and success in this operation are bad enough for Quatre on his own, much less with the five of us."
"So you don't care?"
"I don't care about anyone or anything, Trowa."
"What about Duo?"
// What possessed him to talk so much today, of all days? // Heero growled inwardly, trying to concentrate on his objectives.
"He... he saved my life," Heero answered finally, choosing his words carefully. "When I was captured at the military hospital in the GP-1 area, he rescued me. He... helped me, when I wasn't strong enough to help myself. It was my first time outside of a laboratory, Trowa. He helped me understand the things I hadn't been taught before. Real life situations I hadn't been prepared for."
"So you love him?"
"Love him? No! I owe him my life. I don't love anyone," Heero replied instantly, but even the second he said it, he wasn't so sure.
Shaking his shaggy head, Trowa said, "But he loves you."
"That's a lie."
"It's true."
"We'll talk about it back on neutral ground," Heero said finally, trying to close the subject. "Those are the base's mecha?" he asked.
Trowa nodded. "Some of them. The others belong to terrorists allied with OZ, and some of the government men that are being puppeted by Sanaa. If the word we got from Quatre and Duo is right, Sanaa will be delivering the nukes personally to Colonel Une on Moonbase in about three or four days."
"And the dictators stay in Saudi."
"Right," Trowa whispered back. "Traitors."
"Almost time to move in," Sidi said quietly, as if to remind them that the talking was over, and the fighting was about to begin. The young Arab spoke quiet Arabic into a small palm-sized radio, ordering the other Maguanacs to take their places around the base, crawling forward through the long grass on their stomachs.
It had taken an hour for Heero and Trowa to handpick their squadron from the Maguanac Corps. It was small, but what they lacked in quantity, they made up in quality. The Maguanacs were an elite group. Rashid's hired band of desert hunters had not come easily to Quatre, nor cheaply. Their arms and training for first-rate, and the only one among them who had not had battle experience was the young Arab that came to guide them to the base, Sidi.
Trowa agreed to let Heero had tactical command, since the Japanese pilot's training was far more fine-tuned than his.
Heero turned his chilling gaze on Sidi. "You stay close by us, Sidi. Check your weapons now." With sweaty hands, Trowa and Heero checked their own weapons, examining the grenades hooked to the web belts criss-crossed across their shoulders, memorizing the position of the different types: concussion, frag, smoke. They took the pistols from the holsters at their waists. Clips loaded, safety off. Heero slid the action of his stubby submachine gun back and forth. When he was satisfied it was ready, he slapped a magazine into place with practiced ease.
"Now what?" Sidi asked quietly, his heavily accented voice low in the grass between them.
"We wait," Trowa replied, settling himself more comfortably.
"How long?"
"Until twilight," Heero answered. "Let them get their dinner fires ready."
"What if they have patrols?" the young guide asked nervously.
"Oh, they do," Trowa said, conversationally. "But they won't find the others. Now be quiet," he added, his voice still soft and gentle.
Sidi nodded and lapsed obediently into silence. For hours, the brace of hunting Gundam pilots scanned the base with their binoculars, turning up the electro-optical gain to its highest, until they could make out the faces of the people.
// It's hard to tell the soldiers from the civilians, // Heero thought. Except for the dusty uniforms the soldiers wore, there was no real difference among the men. Some of the women were uniformed too, assault rifles slung over their slim, girlish shoulders. The civilian women wore long colorful batik skirts and djellabas.
The largest building in the base was obviously the mobile suit hangar and factory. Trowa clicked on the subminaturized video camera built into his binoculars, watching the soldiers. He saw a few government officials in light conservative suits, kowtowing over the officer in charge of the base. "What would Duo say, Heero?" Trowa whispered, capturing it all on tape. "'You're on candid camera?'"
"Something like that."
Heero checked by radio with one of the English-speaking Maguanacs in their force, a pilot who had hidden his mobile suit in the dunes along with the other five. No sign of any enemy patrols. No hint they had been detected.
"It's time," he ordered quietly into the radio, his voice emotionless as he returned his pistol to its holster and readied his automatic weapon. "Our objective is to attack the dormitories and retreat, not the mobile suits. We don't want to destroy the base, just provoke OZ into sending reinforcements from the nuclear facility. We need to eliminate as many of the enemy soldiers as possible, so shoot to kill."
He turned to Trowa and Sidi. "Ready?"
Trowa nodded, his face solemn. "Alright. Let's get this done."
Heero lifted the radio again, his eyes narrowing in concentration. "All units--attack!!"
They were up and running toward the base. It wasn't walled. It really wasn't more than a roughly rectangular collection of immense cinder-block buildings, most two stories tall. Heero heard the roar of the Maguanac suits flare behind him. He held his submachine gun in both hands, felt the weight of the grenades on his chest, the pistol flopping against his hip.
On both sides of them, Maguanacs in the same light fatigues and sand-colored ski masks bolted from the long grass, guns held level, racing across the clearing between the grass and the guardhouses at the entrance to the small base. Heero dashed to the doorway of the one on the right side of the entrance to the base, broke the door in, took in the sight of surprised, shocked faces. He fired and fired, making sure they were all dead before moving back out into the harsh sunlight.
Trowa had sprinted a few steps ahead of him after dispatching the other guardhouse, dashing agilely between the two nearest buildings. Heero didn't see anyone living except for the Maguanacs and the Heavyarms pilot.
A burst of gunfire to his right. Heero saw Trowa freeze and flatten himself against a cinder-block wall. He copied the action. A soldier came into one of the doorways and let off a volley of shots in their direction. Heero, without thinking, dropped to the ground and fired back. The OZ soldier screamed and fell back into the building.
"Come on!" Trowa yelled, hurrying the Maguanacs behind them. The Heavyarms pilot raced to the building and threw a grenade through the doorway. Almost immediately, it exploded, smoke and screams billowing from the building.
Heero stopped in the doorway, emerging through the smoke in a shadowy silhouette, like an angel of death. Squinting, he saw a tangle of bodies lying across beds splintered by the grenade blast. He knew his job. He had to make sure they were all dead; he had to be certain none of them would stagger out of the door to shoot them in the back. One of the bodies writhed and moaned in pain. It was a soldier, not much older than himself.
He did his job.
Heero walked out just in time to see the soldier's quarters on the other side of the base blown into oblivion by a volley of Maguanac mobile suit fire. He ran deeper into the base, headed towards the officer's lodgings. Gunfire, deeper at the heart of the base. Enemy mobile suits had been activated, and grape shot from the mobile suit battle above him whirred over his head.
He ran down through the center of the base, hearing the muffled sounds of the grenades. Deep voices shouting and cursing. Screams of terror and agony.
The pilot of Wing saw several of the Maguanacs shooting up at the rooftops of the buildings. He recognized Trowa among them, his feline grace evident even in camouflage and battle. Chunks of cinder block flew in all directions, but Heero couldn't see any enemy soldiers up there. Suddenly, the dark silhouette of a grenade against the flaming desert sunset sky, then exploding between the men. They were flung like rag dolls, smashing against the cinder walls.
"Trowa!!" Without a second thought, Heero abandoned his training, trying to see where Trowa had been thrown. A fragment from the grenade hit him in the collarbone, throwing him to the ground.
He scrambled to his feet in time to see three men with assault rifles coming towards him. No, two boys and a young girl. Very young, all of them, twelve years old or less. He brought up his gun.
// No. //
A vision of another young girl, walking her dog.
// No!! //
His finger froze on the trigger.
// The girl... //
He could not fire at them. He knew he had to kill them or they would kill him. He commanded his finger to squeeze the trigger. He silently raged at his lethal hands to do what they had to do. But his finger would not move a millimeter closer to the trigger.
The ten year-old girl, a guerrilla soldier under OZ orders, shot him, a single shot, straight to the chest. Heero felt a tremendous hammer throw him to the ground. The blood-red sky gradually went dark. The last thing he heard was a voice bellowing over the sound of gunfire.
It sounded like Trowa.
TBC...
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