Operation Just Cause - Official
[REDACTED LOCATION] SIGMA ECI (DAWNFLOWER) // UNL // NOSSBI
Panama, Central America // UNL // NOSSBI
DATE OUT OF RANGE (APPROXIMATE) // UNL // NOSSBI
TIMESTAMP ERROR - Local (APPROXIMATE) // #$% // ERROR
WARNING! CRC ERROR IN DAMAGE CONTROL (DC)!
DC REPORTS CORE SYSTEMS AT 62%
DC REPORTS COMBAT SYSTEMS AT 84%
DC REPORTS SECONDARY SYSTEMS AT 38%
lizard.bin resident
survival.exe resident
combat.sys resident

Stillwater, Anthony "Ant", Sergeant, US Army
Echo-Five-Actual NCOIC
- Missing in Action (Presumed Dead)

The Panamanian Defense Force soldier was big, bigger than any of them I'd seen so far. Over six and a half feet tall, out weighed me by at least fifty, maybe sixty pounds, with at least six inches of reach on me. Black hair, eyes dark pits with silver lights in them, acne or jungle rot scars pockmarking his face, bent nose with the broken veins of a long term drinking.

He swung the severed arm, slapping Dawson across the side of the head with it, sending her stumbling away. I got the heavy knife up just as he lumbered toward me, his other hand swiping out, wrapping around my throat, squeezing.

I felt my eyes bulge as he tightened his grip, squeezing hard enough my heartbeat thundered in my ears, my face and temples throbbed in tune with the heartbeat, and my vision blurred. I swiped with the knife, but it didn't even touch the guy's chest.

His fist hit me in the face, driving the back of my skull against the wall as the door shut.

Everything vanished in a white flash and my hands opened. The lizard hissed, reaching forward and flipping the plexiglass shield from the big red button.

Dawson had tripped over her own feet, falling to the floor, narrowly missing falling down the stairs, spitting blood on the tile floor of the stairwell landing.

Another hit right as my vision started to come back, again slamming the back of my head against the heavy cinderblock wall.

Now a high pitched whine was filling my ears, overriding the thumping of my heart. The lizard snarled as sparks shot out from the cabinet under one of his consoles, his long taloned fingers reaching forward to rest on the button.

My arms came up at the elbow, wrists limp, fingers slightly curled, as my body automatically went into the protective posture. My vision came back faster, and I knew my eyes were crossed.

Dawson was trying to get up, getting to her feet, stumbling to the side, her shoulder crashing into the wall.

Another impact, more white light.

The lizard pressed down the button.

Everything came back online in a rush.

The PDF soldier still had his big meathook around my neck, still cutting off airflow. I swallowed hard, bore down on the air still left in my lungs, and tightened up hard, flexing my neck muscles. It didn't help much, but it helped enough. Rule of Six. Well, that really didn't help when you were being strangled, but it let me keep my head in the game.

you have enough air it's the panic response

My left hand came up, wrapping around the wrist. My vision was already distorted, static starting to shoot through it.

Common knowledge said try to grab his thumb from my neck, break it, but his thumb was dug too deeply into my throat and I'd already lost a lot of strength from the hits on the head and loss of oxygen from being strangled.

And I was weaker than I had been.

My right arm came up. I couldn't get the same kind of power, same kind of thrust I needed, but I didn't need that much. I cocked my wrist ninety degrees and drove the heel of my hand against the back of his elbow.

The joint went with a loud pop. His hand opened and I dropped to the floor.

Instinct said to curl up, put my hands on my throat, gasp for air in big whooping breaths, go into a protective posture.

The lizard slapped another button and cut that instinct off.

It wasn't far to the floor, only a foot or so, but my knee was extended, taking the shock as my heel and the bottom of the brace took the shock. The kinetic force jammed the thigh band up into my crotch, smashing my balls and filling my stomach with leaden agony.

That wasn't the worst.

The impact traveled up my leg, my knee compacting as damaged cartilage cracked and compressed, the end of the bones of my thigh and shin slamming into each other.

Every plan I had short circuited right there.

Dawson pushed herself off the wall, standing up straight, hand going to her empty pistol holster, then looking around.

My knee buckled forward, only the metal slats and hinges of the brace keeping my knee from buckling to my left. I screamed in pain as I went down, getting my hand out in time to stop myself from ending up with my knee slamming into the tile.

My hand hit the severed arm, the arm rolled under my palm, and I went face first into the floor.

The big PDF thug reached down, grabbing my belt, and lifting me up off the floor. I kicked, trying to get my feet under me.

why are you letting this big idiot manhandle you?

Dawson had scooped up her rifle and buttstroked him in the kidneys with a dull thump.

The big gorilla let me go so I fell to the floor, turning to face Dawson. I struggled, trying to get to my feet, but my left wasn't working too well. Morphine was keeping away the pain, but joint damage was preventing me from getting to my feet. I looked up, getting my right foot under me, and saw Dawson set her feet.

She did a Basic Training bayonet fighting maneuver set.

End up the butt of the weapon to the side of the head. bring the weapon down crossways, slam the muzzle into his gut, slam the butt against his side, muzzle into the gut again, bring the barrel up, behind the shoulder, rifle butt into the chin.

The guy staggered back, rolling his shoulders, growling.

I got my feet under me, standing up behind him.

He had a machete on his thigh, strapped there. Standard jungle warfare placement.

I wrapped my hand around it and pulled it free at the same time as he bumped into me. His sheer mass sent me off balance and I crashed backwards against the wall. My head hit and everything flashed white. I slumped sideways down the wall, trying to hold onto the machete and catch myself at the same time. All it did was slam my knuckles against the tile.

Dawson grabbed the barrel of her rifle and swung for the fences, the butt of the weapon slamming against the side of the Jolly Green Panamanian Giant's head with the sound of a melon hit with a bat. The guy stood there for a moment, wavering, as Dawson's rifle broke in half. The retaining pins holding the upper and lower receiver had snapped through the stamped metal of the weapon.

The Panamanian crashed to the floor in front of me, but Dawson wasn't done. She grabbed the broken lower receiver, dropped to her knees, and began slamming the butt of the weapon into the guy's skull over and over.

I managed to sit up.

"He's dead, Tommy," I quoted, coughing. I rubbed my throat, coughed again, and looked up at her as she got to her feet.

"He so much as twitches and I'm right back on him," Dawson snarled. She looked at her weapon. "Well, crap. This thing is toast."

"Help me up," I coughed, holding up my hand.

Dawson dropped the broken rifle, letting it land on the ground with a clatter. She stomped over to me, bent down and grabbed my hand. She heaved me up on my feet, catching me when I almost fell over.

"Your throat is bruised," She told me. She tilted her head, looking at my face, "You've got a nose bleed, your left eye is leaking blood, and you've got blood leaking from your ear."

I just nodded. "Yeah, he fucked me up good," I coughed, rubbing my throat.

"Stuff your tampon in and lets get going," She said, turning toward the heavy security door.

"Let me go first," I told her.

"I'm in better shape than you, Sergeant," She snapped.

"I'm more disposable," I answered, thumping past her.

"I am so sick of that Special Weapons bullshit," she growled.

She let me go by anyway.

I shoved the door open, revealing a large room. The lights were on, flickering slightly, revealing the blood slicked tile, the bodies in the room, the large semi-circular desk with at least one body, maybe two thrown on it. There were circular stairs leading up to a balcony terrace, doors to my right, across from me, and a set of double doors to our left.

The welcome area.

Bingo.

"Stay frosty," I told her, swinging my left leg out and clumping into the vestibule. "Things are worse than we thought."

"What do you mean?" She asked me, moving out to my left.

I slapped the machete against my right thigh as I clumped toward the desk. "The guy's eyes."

"What about them?" She asked me. She looked at one of the bodies as I passed by. It was missing its limbs and head, the abdomen torn open and the insides spread around. "Jesus."

"Witch lights," I told her. I reached the desk, putting out my left hand and leaning forward, taking the weight off my left leg.

"What?"

"Witch lights. The silver in his eyes. It's witch lights," I looked over the desk, hoping to find what I was looking for.

"All right, what does that mean?" She asked me, the tone in her voice letting me know she was just humoring me as far as she was concerned.

"There's a bruja at work, and that's bad news," I told her.

"What the hell is a bruja?" She asked, stepping up next to me.

"Central America witch," I told her. "Seriously bad news."

"How the hell do you know?" She asked, staring at me as I clomped around the desk, looking under it.

I shouldn't have.

There was a woman under there. Matted hair, blackened teeth, her tanned skin pallid, her lips blue. She hand died trying to hold her guts in.

She'd failed.

"Bedtime stories," I said, straightening up. "Best way to keep a child in their room is to tell them stories about what's waiting out there in the dark for them."

"Bedtime story?" She shook her head. "A bedtime story?"

I turned and looked at her. "Really?"

She stopped, staring into my one eye. "What?"

"You're going to doubt me when I say there's a witch? Why? Because you don't believe in witches?" I made air quotes on the last part. "Jesus, Natalie, after everything you've seen, you're going to stop believing about the time it comes to witches?"

Dawson nodded. "Please, witches? Like, I'll get you my pretties, witches? Pull my other finger and maybe I'll fart."

That made me laugh. The shaking made my leg hurt, which stopped the laughter. "You've seen a forest fey crawl on the walls, seen Cromwell's eyes, and you draw the line at a witch?" I moved over to one of the chairs, sitting down in it and stretching my leg out. "Cromwell's a witch."

Dawson snorted. "No, she's not."

I shrugged and my shoulder popped deep inside the joint with a squishy sounding crack. "Really? Holly leaves in her hair, purple eyes, knows what direction she's going in, she can find lost children, and her hair sometimes moves like Aine's. Celtic witch, but still a witch."

She glared at me. "OK, so they've that weird light in their eyes. So what? She's controlling them?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Controlling them, infecting them with madness, empowering them somehow. All I know is that witch lights are bad news."

She snorted.

"Yeah, snort," I sneered at her. "I'm alive. I shouldn't be, I should be dead on the floor of my room, my blood freezing, and Cromwell should have been gang raped and eaten alive by cannibals."

I put my hand on the desk. "But I'm here. You're here," I looked up at the roof, the ceiling more than two stories above us and sighed. "And there's a bruja here. Which is just my damn luck."

"What next, Stillwater, dragons, vampires, mummies?" She asked.

I frowned at her. "What with the closed mind? Seriously, Natalie, with everything you've seen, you're going to doubt me now?"

She shook her head. "This isn't Alfenwehr, Tony."

I slapped my hand on the table. "It's Central America, Natalie. Civilizations rose and fell out here before Europe got its shit together. The Aztecs, the Olmeks, the Toltecs, all of them were here. With their own power, own legends, own beliefs. Their own things that went bump in the night, that ate small naughty children, killed those who strayed from the path."

I waved at the dead bodies in front of me, in front of the desk, the way they were strewn about, some torn apart, some dismembered. "Notice anything about them all?"

She turned around,  I saw her shoulders hunch as she swallowed a retch. She turned back around. "No. What?"

I dug one of the morphine shots out of my pocket, uncapping it with my teeth, and unclipping the safety clip on the plunger.

"Really? Look again," I told her, using two fingers to spread open the rip in the thigh of my BDU pants.

Dawson turned around, looking behind her again, then back at me. "What? They're dead. And pretty ugly dead too."

I stuck the morphine sticker into my leg and pressed down the plunger, feeling the cold of the drug spread through my thigh muscle.

"You sure that's a good idea. You have a, uh, bad reaction to it," She said softly. I looked at her and saw fear in her eyes.

I shrugged. "I need to be able to move around. My leg, and the pain, is slowing me down. With a bruja around, with big fucking Panamanians with eyes full of witch light, I don't need anything to slow me down."

"I don't like it," She said softly.

I shrugged and tossed the injector away, hearing the plastic bounce.

"They probably didn't like being disemboweled and their hearts carved out," I told her.

She glanced behind her then looked back at me. "Why would someone do that?"

"Local tradition," I grinned at her.