DINO EATER (IT'S NOT OVER YET)

[Big Orange]

More, moorreee...

[Shroom Man 777]

Ask and you shall receive. The thirteenth chapter of DINO EATER!




Twilight now. The coming of dawn marked the beginning of a new day, but as the sun had yet emerged from the horizon, the jungle was still submerged in something that was less than darkness, but not quite daylight either.

Fidel listened. The jungle was alive, waking animals began making their morning calls. Birds cawed and hooted and chirped, filling the jungle with their calls and cries. From miles away, the yawns of lazy howler monkeys could be heard, their form of protest against the end of their peaceful slumber. Nocturnal creatures were now turning over for it was no longer their time, and so their sounds were replaced by new noises, so that no one would forget that the jungle never truly slept – that the jungle was always awake, always alive.

Fidel’s hard teeth crushed the rat’s bones and his canines sliced through flesh. In the Amazon, the rodents had a varied but balanced diet that contributed to the…grain of their meat. He chewed it up, one hard bite crunching the rat’s skull like some cashew, and he ran his tongue over it all – the meat, the fluids, the viscera, even the fur. Savoring the taste. The jungle never let anything to waste, and neither did Fidel.

He swallowed the masticated mouse with a series of gulps and moved on to his second course – disc-shaped jungle fungus he found growing on the bark of a felled tree trunk, a hollow tree trunk that was also the previous residence of a certain rodent. He was sitting on the felled tree right now and savoring the wretched taste of the mushrooms – it was like eating styrofoam.

Fidel unscrewed his canteen and took a sip to down it all and wash the taste out of his oral cavity. He placed the canteen back in its pouch and noticed the lonely can of rations in his other pocket. Its contents probably tasted leagues better than his course of mouse and mushrooms…but he didn’t want to eat it, at least not now. It would be just wasteful and uncalled for.

The essence of survival, Fidel reasoned to himself, was conservation. Sitting down while eating and drinking conserved energy, as did taking regular rests, and ammunition had to be spent carefully in the jungle, as well as battery power, for some of these things couldn’t be recovered or reused. Fidel would open that little tin can only when it was the right time. Right now, he would stick to skewering rodents with his survival knife (not his close-quarters combat knife – he carried more than one knife, for varied purposes).

Fidel tried the Enriques’ radio frequency again, but there was no response, just like before. Fidel contacted the Major, who was worried – with the Enriques incommunicado, Fidel just lost a vital means of navigation and exfiltration. The Major suggested contacting L, if that was possible.

“L…are you there?”

“Fidel, it’s you! Are you alright? I was worried… I’ve had to wait for hours, your friends won’t let me out until you finished ‘your mission’. Please tell me you’re done Fidel…” she sounded tired, exhausted. If only she knew.

“I’m sorry, L, but this is far from over.”

There was a frustrated sigh. “Why? What are you doing in the jungle, anyway? I know you’re not really a conservationist, what’s going on?”

“L, I can’t tell you what’s going on. Just hang on, okay? I’m… still on the trail of that Allosaurus.”

“Fidel…don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not-”

Suddenly, the exhaustion was gone from her voice and in its place was an edge Fidel wasn’t expecting. “Fidel, did you know that I was one of the paleobiologists the US government consulted after the incident at Isla Norte? They asked me and Grant, since we actually got to visit the island once, about GenInc’s dinosaurs. We were just consultants and they practically interrogated us. Why? Because the dinosaurs ‘got loose’. That was their explanation, but I know there’s more to it than that.

What they told us was just like any other cover story they feed people whenever some rogue experiment’s escaped, or when they don’t want people to know the damage the last extraterrestrial attack did. I told them GenInc was creating altered dinosaurs. I told them that Lemonde, the CEO, bragged about getting the interests of some governments. Let me ask you, Mr. Fidel Castro, what would governments want with recreating and altering dinosaurs?”

“I honestly don’t know, L.”

“Please. Before GenInc was preoccupied with its dinosaur park, it was an all-purpose genetics and biotech company, it had branches on everything including a bioweapons division. They might’ve not told us what exactly happened on that island, why none of GenInc’s employees managed to come back home, but I think I have a pretty good picture of what’s going on, don’t you?”

Though she couldn’t see it, Fidel was nodding his head and muttering something unintelligible.

“And now you’re in the Amazon, asking me about dinosaur ‘weak-spots’ and vulnerabilities. I can’t leave my room because I have help you through radio like it’s some life-or-death matter. Then, for hours, you were incommunicado. This radio has a call button, you know. I tried giving you a few rings, but I couldn’t raise you,” she snorted. “There wasn’t even an answering machine…”

“Heh…”

“When they told me that a ‘conservationist’ needed a radio contact with ‘detailed information’ on dinosaurs just days after the US government asked me about GenInc’s runaway experiments, I knew something was up. So, let’s stop pretending, Mr. Castro.”

“Alright. But do me a favor, Ellie.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Call me Fidel.”



The mercenaries were spread out in search formation. Nightvision goggles were of no use with the coming of day and neither were flashlights, yet nonetheless the twilight ensured low-visibility conditions in the deep jungle underbrush – conditions that obscured and hindered the hunt.

The mercs fanned out, for shortly after they found Eduardo’s neutralized team, Castro’s trail had run cold and disappeared completely.

Multiple squads were assigned to the search to increase the odds of finding Fidel Castro, and to decrease the odds of his survival. They maintained radio contact with the base, each squad having at least one radioman and each squad radioing in every few minutes – if a squad failed to make a routine transmission, then they would be presumed lost.

As they brushed through the rampant vines and bushes, the squads neared one of the Corporation’s ‘perimeter extenders’, a camouflaged tree platform made out of steel bars and railings, and the men posted to it shrugged. They saw no one pass through this way, they said.

The search party went on deeper into the jungle, splintering into units that were nonetheless composed of more men than a single squad.

They were wary in their search. Word had spread of their quarry’s unnatural ability to avoid detection, of how Eduardo’s squad had been felled by weaponless means. Of how Fidel Castro was shackled and restrained while dispatching the mercs with silent efficiency. Some of them had seen the squad leader, Eduardo, being hauled off in a stretcher, his face bloated and discolored, his mouth rimmed with froth.

Some of the men were superstitious and crossed themselves, others were having second thoughts about working for the Corporation despite the generous payments they would be sending back home to their families. A few were desperate city scum now regretting ever setting foot into the jungle. Most of them just wanted this to be over with.

They moved slowly and carefully, avoided making noise, silently placed themselves behind trees and other forms of cover and concealment. Their quarry had freed himself of his restraints and had relieved Eduardo’s squad of their gear, which meant he now had weapons. He could now strike at any time of his choosing.

They had to kill him first.

Like the rest, Mendoza had sheathed his machete and slowly crept through the bushes and vines, parting them with his hands. He had smeared his face with mud to conceal himself and carried on his back an RPK machinegun. He bent down to the ground to look for trails but found none. Slowly, he moved forward.

He was hesitant, a bit nervous, he looked to his side and saw a squadmate scanning the jungle with sharp eyes. Before becoming a mercenary, Mendoza was a government soldier and had heard stories about a named Fidel Castro who helped those pesky communist rebels, and he laughed, thinking they were talking about Cuba’s undying President. But now he knew.

He looked to his other side and saw the rest of his men, along with two other squads, silent in their careful progression through the jungle. There was a sound of rustling leaves and they all brought their weapons up to bear. A jungle parrot screeched as it flew off a branch high up in the trees, searching for breakfast perhaps, and the mercs collectively relaxed their trigger-fingers.

Someone laughed, someone else told him to shut up, and Mendoza shushed the both of them.

Mendoza wondered why that pale-skinned gringo didn’t send his little team of stormtroopers out. Probably thought they were worth more than ragtag latino mercs. But if that was so, then why were those other gringos sent out into the jungle as well? There was that guy in the cowboy boots…

Mendoza stopped when he noticed a torn vine hanging in front of him.

He held out a closed fist for all to see and the mercs became as still as the trees.

Slowly and carefully, Mendoza took the torn vine with his hands. It looked like it had been cut by a blade. He looked forward and saw none of the mercs ahead, and remembered that they weren’t using their machetes.

Then he saw something else, a broken branch, which told him that someone had just passed by recently. He looked down and saw what looked like a footprint in the mud.

Mendoza turned his head sideways. Puckering his lips, he made a high-pitched birdcall, a repeating tsi-sound, catching the attention of the squad radioman. The radioman looked and Mendoza made a hand-signal that told him to call the base. Then, after another hand-gesture, the squad drew their weapons and moved out.

Mendoza tore off the cloth cover of his RPK machinegun and slapped on a drum magazine – one hundred rounds of 7.62 mm full metal jacketed death.

The hunt was on.



“Did you get all that, Major?” Fidel asked.

“Yes. We knew L once visited GenInc’s dinosaur park and acted as a consultant, but we never thought she knew this much.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing. In fact, the more she knows, then the better she can help us. It’s not our fault if the Americans can’t keep a lid over their own dirty laundry, is it?”

“No, it’s not. Hrm…” Fidel got off the tree trunk he was sitting on, pulled the earpiece off his ear and crouched low. For several long seconds, he listened to the sounds of the jungle – the birds. Then he replaced his earpiece.

“Fidel, what’s wrong?”

“I just heard a Blackpoll Warbler…”

“Fidel, the Amazon is full of noisy birds. Are you hungry or something?”

“Those birds don’t migrate back to South America for another half-year. Major, I’ll call you later.”



The mercenaries were crouched low, camouflage blending in with foliage, gun barrels sticking out of bushes, between leaves and branches, each gunman making sure to intersect his line of fire with another while covering all angles. The squads had spread out, forming a wall that would have ambushed their prey. Had he actually been there.

“We’ve lost him again,” Mendoza scowled, spitting the words out like a curse. The tracks they were following had abruptly ceased to exist and, once again, they had succeeded in failing to find their mark.

“It doesn’t make sense,” a merc in a ski mask shook his head. He was down on one knee, examining a vestige of a footprint. “It’s like the guy just disappeared.”

“Miedra.” Mendoza sighed, turning on the safeties of his machinegun with a click.

“Someone should radio the base, tell them we lost him.”

“And have them think we’re idiotas? No way, José.”

“Then what do we tell them?”

“Just tell them we’re still on his trail.”

“But there is no trail.”

“Then we’ll have to look harder, won’t we? The man can’t just disappear without a trace…where the hell could he be hiding?”

“Maybe…” José trailed off. Slowly, he pointed to the trees and immediately Mendoza saw it too, a vine that was overstretched, hanging off a branch and ending just a few feet shy of the ground. “He’s using the trees.”

Mendoza turned off the safeties of his RPK and, as one, the mercenaries rose up to continue the pursuit.



Fidel waited for them to leave the motion detector’s range, counted the passing seconds, the passing breaths, waited for the tiny blips and dots to disappear one by one. He ignored the orange centipede as it crawled all the way up his backside, went over the rear of his neck, and then passed by his grimacing face.

Too close, Fidel thought. If that fake birdcall hadn’t given them away, the mercs would have been all over him – and he would have been dead.

In the battlefield, luck was often just as important as skill – survival often hinged upon the mistakes and failures of the enemy. But one should never rely upon the shortcomings of the enemy to survive, Fidel cautioned himself. That, in itself, was a grave mistake. In the battlefield, mistakes killed.

Fidel crawled out of the hollow tree trunk and crouched low.

He pulled out a map previously procured from Eduardo’s convulsing half-corpse, and a compass. N had given him coordinates – inconvenient coordinates that would take him hours to reach, factoring in the obstruction of the jungle and the evasion of enemy patrols. Maybe even a day.

There was no other choice though; he knew it and so too did the Major. In their heightened alert levels, the facilities would be impossible to infiltrate without assistance.

Fidel would have to detour around the patrolling search-squads…



“He’s not in the trees,” Mendoza said quietly to himself. He turned around to face José.

“What?”

“He’s not in the trees,” Mendoza repeated himself. “No broken branches, no trail, nothing except that vine that threw us off.”

“He’s a sneaky fucker…” José trailed off.

“Very sneaky,” Mendoza agreed. He raised a closed fist, signaling the search party to stop once more.

They stopped. Each squad was fanned out and divided into three-man teams spread over the underbrush, each man watching the other’s back as they advanced through the jungle. At Mendoza’s signal, everyone stopped moving. A few looked at him in confusion as he quietly rushed past them, going from the point of their formation to the rear. As he passed by the fire teams, pausing only to relay hand-signaled commands, so too did they alter their heading appropriately. José, Mendoza’s subordinate, relayed the message on to the others and went over to the radioman.

With another hand-signal, the search party changed course. Men about-faced while a few remained to cover their flanks, the rear-guard themselves about-facing and moving out only when signaled by shoulder-taps. No longer advancing as one, the mercenaries formed smaller groups and disseminated. Some of them advanced as point squads, while others were slower in their movements, staying back to provide distant cover. The squads didn’t proceed in a straight line, but instead opted for curved divergent routes that would temporarily fan them out, but their paths would lead them to converge some distance later – reforming back into one unit. By fanning out they would cover more ground, but by converging later on, they could perform headcounts and ensure that they weren’t getting picked off one by one.

They were going to flank their quarry.



John Doe walked carelessly through the jungle, humming a tune in his head and trying not to get lost. He was looking at his tactical radar, which was chained onto his belt like a fancy pocket watch, watching blips that represented the mercs fan out in a distinct pattern, as if they had actually found something – as if they actually had a clue as to where their mark was.

John yawned. He had spent the wee hours of the morning searching for some slippery spic and these mercs had spent the whole morning acting like they actually knew what they were doing, like as if they were on the verge of finding the guy, and their constant radioing was getting tiring. Three times now, they had found the mark’s trail, lost it, found it again and then lost it again – like some game of jungle fever hide-and-seek. John yawned. He was tired of the jungle, it was hot and miserable, the mud was messing up his (expensive) cowboy duds, and there was nothing to do but chase runaway prisoners and catch malaria. Why money-grubbing supervillains were out here tooling in the jungle in the first place, he had no clue, but he didn’t really care. He wasn’t paid to think about things, he was paid to kill things.

That’s what he did, the only thing he did. He was a completely average-looking guy, he wasn’t tall or intimidating or anything, lacked any menacing scars and evil deformities whatsoever, and the folks back over at the orphanage even had the bright idea of giving him a mind-numbingly unimaginative name (John Doe was his real name). But underneath that utterly unremarkable exterior, though, he had a really nifty trick. In such a competitive job market, you had to have a nifty trick in order to stand out.

His trick: he was so good that he didn’t even need a gun. However the hell that worked (he never really bothered figuring it out).

He was just that damn good. So good that finding a good self-respecting job as an evil henchman for a bunch of supervillain megalomaniacs was, to him, just a matter of checking the classified ads and printing out a resume on a piece of bond paper.

Hench-manning at a posh volcano island lair in the Caribbean, that’s what he was looking forward to when he got himself employed. Beforehand, he just went by doing nifty tricks and blowing people’s brains out back in Crowtalon City, US of A, doing small-time jobs for everyone with a shiny penny. How in hell he ended up in a shithole jungle without any malaria medicine, he had no clue.

Truth be told, he had a bad feeling about this. That kid Ted nearly had his eyes gouged out, or that’s what the mercs were saying. Poor kid.

“Heh,” John said to himself. “I’m not gonna end up like that, no way-” Then his earpiece microbead began beeping, prompting him to place a finger on his ear. “Hello?”

He heard the cold monotone of that albino. “Slinger, Number 13. Proceed to the following coordinates. The target has been acquired.”

“About damned time,” John Doe, the Slinger, exclaimed as he worked his hands and made clicking-cocking mechanical sounds with his mouth. “Click-click ka-chick-chick!”

As the hunt began for the Slinger, the sun slowly made its ascent over the horizon, casting golden beams of orange light that gently seeped through the canopy. He looked up and saw a flock of bright emerald green birds resting on a tree branch and as the sunlight glistened off their bright feathers, they started to sing.

Maybe the jungle wasn’t so bad after all.



Fidel placed three leaves in his mouth, underneath his tongue. After tasting them for a full minute and noting no reaction, which meant that they were safe to eat, he then chewed them up, swallowed them, and began picking more leaves of the same kind. With the recent rain and the coming of dawn, the leaves were moist with droplets of dew, making them ideal sources of quick sustenance.

After sucking the moisture out of a handful of leaves, Fidel chewed them thoroughly into green cud and swallowed. On a nearby tree trunk, a rare herbivorous monitor lizard greeted the rising sun with a throaty sound.

Startled, Fidel snapped his head sideways towards the noise but relaxed after finding its source. The lizard flicked its tongue at Fidel and enthusiastically slapped its tail against the tree trunk in rapid-fire succession, making even more noise.

“Heh,” Fidel scoffed. He returned his attention back to the direction he was traversing but quickly shielded his eyes from the sunlight’s glare, the orange-yellow beams of dawnlight that stabbed through the wounded jungle canopy.

The burst of machinegun fire went through the jungle like a stream of supersonic steel scything through flimsy vegetation, the rapport of deafening gunfire silencing the morning chorus of birds and bugs while a stray bullet turned a particularly noisy lizard into a spray of tiny guts.

In the instant the lizard exploded, Fidel was already in the process of throwing himself onto the ground. He landed behind a convenient shrub-shrouded tree and reflexively drew his CQC knife (not his survival knife) and his silenced pistol, and then began an immediate situation assessment – viewing his equipped motion detector while crouching low and trying to get a visual of his assailants.

Four mercenaries, one at the center-rear letting off suppressive fire with his RPK, two at the sides carefully advancing from the left and the right while pausing to fire off quick bursts, the fourth one far back with a radio.

Bullets hissed past Fidel’s tree cover, making snapping sounds as leaves were torn into bits and branches were pulverized into splinters. He could actually feel some of the bullets that landed into the trunk of his particular tree, felt the impact of three shots in rapid succession, exploding bark and splinters, and he could tell just from the vibrations how close the projectiles were to overpenetrating and finding their way into his torso. If they had armor-piercing bullets, it would’ve been all over. And if the two mercs got too close, the tree would soon lose its cover value entirely – they would know exactly where he was hiding, rather than just have a fix on his general location.

Fidel peeked, carefully.

“I see him!” the merc to (Fidel’s) left shouted and pointed. “Over there!”

“Behind that tree!” the one at the other left replied and fired.

The two of them went from shooting towards a general direction to shooting at their target’s tree-cover in particular.

Fidel fired three shots. The silenced pistol was but a whisper amidst the gunfire of three automatic rifles. The merc to the right fell with a sharp jerk, .45 rounds homing into the bright red bandana wrapped around his head.

The merc to the left turned to see his comrade jerk back sharply before crumpling to the mud. He screamed in disbelief as he saw the lingering red mist that came out of his friend’s skull, illuminated in the dawnlight. He was about to face the enemy and return fire when, three shots later, he joined his friend.

Mendoza, behind them at the center providing suppressive fire with his RPK, saw his two men fall in less than ten seconds. He was too far back to hear them point out the target’s location, so in a vain attempt to get their killer, he simply swept his machinegun from one side to the other, spraying all over the jungle and sending lead flying everywhere. The enemy had a silencer, his weapon didn’t make muzzle-flashes, so Mendoza couldn’t zero in on him. Mendoza ducked behind a tree just as a bullet whizzed past his head, he went down on his belly in a prone position and returned full-auto fire.

“We found him,” the radioman said urgently, pressing his walkie hard against his ear. “We’ve lost Lito and Tomas, but we’ve got him pinned down.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve relayed your location to HQ. We’re on our way, just pin him down. Don’t let him out of your sights, we’ll be there!”

“Miedra!” Mendoza cursed as he felt the hard recoil against his shoulder, the feel of his machinegun kicking as it spewed out lead. He paused to catch a breath and to shout, which helped in firing automatic weapons. “Maricon!” he cried as he resumed firing, an act that deforested the radius of foliage immediately before him.

Shrubs and ferns were torn to pieces, their flimsy bodies uprooted and scattered all over, while the larger trees were stabbed full of holes and had their branches brutally amputated. Dust, from the gunfire and the spent casings, was picked up and the dirt and mud exploded by the bullets was sent flying. Eventually a small mound of spent casing formed near where Mendoza was lying down.

“Motherfucker!” Mendoza gasped in finality. He ceased firing and slowly got up -

Then, from a mutilated tree, he saw something coming his way, something small and metallic that gleamed in the sunlight as it flew through the air in an arcing parabolic path. It landed near him and, instinctively, he cried out and threw himself as far away from it as possible. “Grenade!”



As the distant gunman leapt for dear life, Fidel got up and bolted for the jungle. He pulled up his sleeve and toggled his camouflage index, forgoing the pre-set patterns and setting it to active chameleonic instead. He would be, literally, a chameleon. As he disappeared into the underbrush, the Subsistence Suit turned into a living thing – its ‘skin’ blending and seemingly merging with the colors of the jungle.



Seconds passed. Mendoza was in the process of getting off his prone position when he had to unceremoniously leap out of the grenade’s possible blast radius. In that bad posture, he wasn’t really able to jump too far. But the grenade never exploded, and a confused Mendoza got up to find himself surrounded by backup. The cavalry.

The mercs had formed a ring formation, crouching low and covering every conceivable angle of attack –

“What the hell are you doing?!” Mendoza shouted, breaking whatever composure he had before.

José approached him. “Sir?”

“After him!” Mendoza roared.

As one, the mercs bolted into the jungle, their coordinated hunt now devolving into a chase, like hounds after a fox.

As the squads disappeared into the underbrush, Mendoza cursed at himself and was about to pick up his RPK machinegun when he saw the deadly ‘grenade’ he had so narrowly avoided. An old and half-rusted unmarked can of rations.

“Puta!” Mendoza screamed.

He shouldered his RPK and ran into the jungle.



The Subsistence Suit’s chameleon fabric synthesized the colors of the jungle with liquid reflex, like a living fluid thing, merging with and emulating the different shades and shadows of the surrounding environs. Fidel could feel himself blending in with the very jungle, his skin tingling, sometimes growing numb, as the suit absorbed bioenergy to sustain its active camouflage – coalescing colors flowing like some perpetual canvas of cloth.

He couldn’t outrun his pursuers. They had sighted him, they were too near, and they were too many. Who knows how many squads were in the jungle, converging from different directions towards where they thought he was. In the battlefield, when combat was the last recourse and evasion the objective, if you couldn’t run then you had to hide.

He pressed himself hard against the tree trunk, wrapping his arms and legs around it, insinuating himself upon the rough bark as he willed his pursuers to not see him.

He would wait for them to come and pass. If not, then he would wait for them to come, and then he’d strike.



Quiet now. The shuffling sound of boots crunching the jungle floor of dead and decaying leaves and plant matter. Labored breathing of panting mercs, exhausted by the chase. Whispers of squad-leaders communicating, radiomen muttering to their walkies. With the cessation of violence, the jungle once more resumed in making its noise. Birds sang, insects buzzed, tree apes howled over the distance, water dripped. Heavy weapons were prepped. Bayonets were sheathed.



“He’s hiding nearby,” Mendoza said silently. “Waiting for us to pass on.”



A bead of sweat, a tiny droplet glistening in the sunlight, landed on the ear of a seventeen year old from Peru who had joined the mercenaries with in a bid to earn good money. The salty droplet splattered and he reflexively got off the tree he was leaning on, to turn his head upward and -



Fidel leapt off the tree like a panther pouncing upon its prey. He landed just before the merc who had spotted him, the merc who had just been leaning on the tree. Fidel’s third knife, stolen from a dead merc, was now affixed onto the tip of the Kalashnikov’s barrel. With the momentum of descent, it easily speared through the merc’s neck, breaking through the collarbone and coming out the nape of his back.

A hard kick dislodged the bayonet from the merc’s throat and then Fidel went for the next one. The second merc turned around just in time to see his comrade hit the ground, but before he could even bring his weapon to bear, he felt cold steel slice right under his jawbone, severing his carotid artery. The blood meant for his brain spurted out of the small slit-like wound and, just like that, he was dead.

Fidel had no time to spare. The fourth merc had seen him and was drawing his firearm, and the third merc, upon seeing the reaction of the fourth, was just about to turn around. Before he could, though, Fidel rammed the bayonet straight through his spine, through the bone and deep into the abdomen. The merc looked down as a syrup-like mix of blood and bile poured from his mouth.

Fidel squeezed the trigger. The impaled mercenary danced like an epileptic as a full automatic fusillade of 7.62x39mm FMJs tore through his abdomen, overpenetrating his frame, violently exploding his internals outwards like visceral confetti. Despite this, the bullets were in no way altered or slowed in their trajectory and easily found their way into the fourth merc, less than ten feet away. The impaled merc danced and the fourth merc danced along, like jerky marionettes. A fifth mercenary, previously unseen, used the fourth as a human shield – just like Fidel with the one impaled on his rifle. With the still-standing dead men between them, the fifth merc reciprocated Fidel’s fusillade with his own automatic spray.

The deafening roar of gunfire that filled the air was accompanied by a fine red mist as neither Fidel nor the fifth merc ceased firing until their clips and magazines were fully emptied, and neither were willing to leave their gruesome covers, certainly not out of respect for the dead, to expose themselves to the other’s fire. Not until they both ran out of ammo and the two dead mercs finally ceased their jerking dance of death. The fifth merc ejected his spent magazine, which landed on the ground at the exact same moment as the two dead gunmen. Quickly, he pulled out a fresh clip and –

Leaving the Kalashnikov and the bayonet stuck on the impaled merc, Fidel went over to the fifth merc. Before the gunman could reload his weapon, Fidel summarily knifed him in the chest – sliding the steel blade between the ribs in an angle that went straight into his heart. Fidel retracted, withdrew and sheathed his CQC knife and then took the fifth merc’s weapon, reloading it for him.

Though the five mercs were dead, by now everyone else was well aware of what was going on. There were dozens of mercs spread over the jungle, some were too far away to be of any threat, but others were dangerously close.

Fidel got down to a crouch and went for cover as gunfire exploded the jungle foliage all around him and filled the air with the echoes of roaring reports. Bullets whizzed, hissed, popped and snapped, and Fidel winced as a few went past him too close for comfort, one of them even shearing off the fluttering tail-end of his bandana. He threw himself behind the largest tree he could find and returned fire.

A group of three were trying to flank him from his 3 o’ clock and he fired a semi-automatic double tap. Vietnamese tactics training taught that engaging enemies with a weapon set to full-automatic was wasteful, inaccurate and inefficient, with an unacceptable hit probability – in a gun battle like this, Fidel had to be accurate and efficient, maximizing the killing potential of every round that exited his weapon’s barrel, ensuring that every movement he made was for the ultimate goal of survival. The first round tore through the meager cover, the second landed dead center in a man’s chest, keeling him over as the tiny gunshot wound spurted copious amounts of blood. One of the mercs knelt over the injured man and began hauling him away; the other began spraying indiscriminately at Fidel’s general direction. The follow-up punched two holes in his chest, one in each lung.

Next, a group of six came in at Fidel’s 9 o’ clock and he spun around, firing another double tap. The burst punctured through the leading man’s abdomen, not killing him outright but making him an eventual dead man nonetheless. The rounds overpenetrated and knocked down the man behind him, who was either in a flak vest or very lucky, as he would later recover and drag his friend, screaming belly-bleeding point man in front of him, to a place where he could bleed out in peace. Fidel fired again, this time in single shots tuned in to the rhythm of his breathing – one shot per cycle. One shot went into a merc’s shoulder, the next through a neck, another into and out of a hip with a bloody explosion of fragmenting pelvic bone, then the next shots missed entirely – but the remainder of the group were already hitting the ground for cover, or hitting the ground because they were dead.

Then Fidel let out a short-spray, aimed at the largest and nearest group of mercs shooting at him. It wasn’t precise or efficient or accurate, none of the rounds found their mark, but the more cautious mercs intent on staying alive were forced into cover. Fidel left his cover and dashed as fast as humanly possible towards another tree, to establish distance. If they got too close, cover wouldn’t matter and they could just fill him with lead from all angles.

A well-aimed stream of lead, perhaps from a fixed or stationary machinegun, exploded the ground right behind Fidel, picking up a fountain of mud, dirt and decayed plant matter where his feet had just been half-seconds ago. Fidel did a baseball slide that brought him behind another abnormally thick tree.

Fidel panted, breathed hard, in and out, in sync with the rhythmic machinegun rounds hammering his cover. He got down really low, on his belly, just as some of the rounds overpenetrated the sides of the trunk. He took a peek and fired another doubletap and he was rewarded by the sounds of screaming. The rounds had struck a man in the leg and as he bled out, two of his friends tried desperately to keep him alive. Fidel kept count, he replaced the magazine, slapped in a fresh clip and fired more two-shot bursts, carefully calculated to break up the merc’s formations. There were screams and yelps as Fidel aimed to injure, to cripple his hunters as best he could. Then he tried to move on to another cover position before they could enclose him.



Mendoza gritted his teeth as he wrestled with the gun’s recoil, sending round after round in a torrent of steel at the pendejo, that running chickenshit. He screamed as loudly as he could as the RPK buckled, kicking his shoulder, spitting out brass casings from its side. He laughed as dust and dirt was picked up by rounds just missing the puta, he couldn’t make it to his cover and now he was lying on the ground. Cornered.

Mendoza whistled sharply to a merc with aviator shades who was smoking a fat joint. The merc, whose name was Meralco, grinned his rotten yellow teeth and brought out the tube-shaped weapon.

Mercs gathered around Meralco in anticipation as his buddy slid the rocket-propelled grenade into the launcher, and they all winced and covered their ears when the rocket ignited. The RPG screamed a high-pitched wailing and left behind a bluish contrail, streaking across the jungle and detonating in a blast of smoke-seared magenta.

“Whatcha gonna do now, puta?” Mendoza laughed. He turned to José and his squad mates, to tell the radioman to give HQ a final ‘status report’.



Fidel gritted his teeth, covered his ears and opened his mouth, as the concussion and blast wave subsided. Dirt rained down on him, while dead leaves floated in the air, swaying like in some invisible aerial current.

The sound returned to his ears with some ringing and he groaned. Sporadic gunfire whizzed by, aimed at his general direction, and he decided to stay down lest they realize he was still alive.

A tree had its base blown off by the RPG and it fell slowly, as if cut down by a lumberjack’s axe. It landed by Fidel, blocking him from the view of the mercs.



Mendoza saw the small metallic thing fly from where Fidel was, it arced down a parabolic angle and landed in a nearby bush.

”It’s a trick! It’s just another can of - ” Mendoza was shouting. And then he exploded.

At the sight of their leader getting blown into barely-recognizable shrapnel-encrusted bits along with some of their friends, the mercs gathered by Meralco wasted no time in loading another RPG into the launcher.

“Shit, Mendoza’s dead! Shit!” one of them cried out.

“Shoot the rocket, man. Blow the shitter up!”

“Shut up! He can’t shoot it if he doesn’t know where-”

“Fuck it!”

“We have to wait for…there!”



Almost groggily, Fidel got up to his feet and staggered. He shook the dirt off his head and turned to face the gathered mercs.

“Fire!” they screamed as one.

Fidel drew his sidearm and aimed.

The rocket motor ignited, blasting a tail of fire and smoke as it left the launcher with a violent shriek and streaked –

The .45 round slammed into the RPG’s impact fuse, detonating the rocket before it could even travel a meter’s distance.

The resounding explosion sent a plume of acrid black smoke and gouts of orange flame up into the air. As the dust settled, those who were not outright killed by the detonation were sprawled all over the jungle floor. The moans of those who were maimed and torn to pieces, screams of anguish over severed limbs, cries of pain. Those who suffered only minor cuts and wounds couldn’t carry on the pursuit of their target and instead just tended to their dying comrades.



Fidel staggered through the jungle, shaken but not quite stirred. If those mercs had any concern for their comrades, then they would abandon the pursuit to help as many of their injured as possible. Even squads composed of intact mercs wouldn’t carry on the chase, they wouldn’t leave their dead behind to be claimed by the jungle.

It was close, Fidel thought. But no cigar.

He leaned on a tree to catch his breath, to reconnoiter his new surroundings and get a bearing on his location. Even if the mercs were going to pull off, others would no doubt be sent to find him – he would have to move quickly to put some distance while he still had a temporary reprieve.

The terrain was going to get uneven, the trees and foliage were already thinning out, the ground was rocky, and all over were large stones, man-sized marble blocks partially covered in green mold, with their smoothened surfaces interrupted by lines seemingly carved onto its surface. Fidel could just barely make out the sounds of flowing water, a nearby stream maybe. Flowing water usually smoothened rocks, wearing their surface down in time, though they usually didn’t carve symmetrical lines into stones.

Fidel consulted his map. The coordinates N gave him led to this general area, which in turn led uphill. The map also showed a small stream nearby. Fidel re-checked his compass, just to be sure he was heading the right way.

There was a narrow path covered in flat stones leading up the inclination. Fidel scowled, the footpath and the carved marble stones looked like ruins of some kind. The path’s stones were covered in mold, just like the marble, meaning that they haven’t been used in a while…

Fidel decided to risk the path. The inclination was barely a hill and as soon as Fidel went over the top, the trek uphill became a half-slide downwards as the mold-encrusted ‘cobblestones’ of the pathway proved slippery. Fidel ended up sliding on top of a carved block, this one much larger than the previous ones on the other side.

“Ruins,” Fidel muttered, finding himself in an area of flattened ground dotted by similar marble blocks, decayed edifices that once stood high before the jungle reclaimed what was rightfully its, monuments something now long since dead. Below, the ground was covered in loosely spaced cobblestones that formed a kind of courtyard. Because the ground had been cleared, the lack of shade prompted lesser vegetation like grass - usually rare in dark forests – to grow out of the gaps between the cobbles in an outpouring of verdant green. Without trees to cling to, tendrilous vines snaked across the decrepit yard, some of them finding purchase on the scattered marble blocks. Bisecting the courtyard was a crumbled wall, a heap of rubble and bricks and flowering blossoms mounding at its base, though parts of it still stood in defiance to nature’s will. Here and there were stone pillars, some leaning limply, others lying on the ground.

Nonetheless, this was still the jungle, and surrounding the courtyard’s clearing was the darkness of the underbrush, and two streams running parallel on either side of the yard – forming a kind of moat. At the edges of the courtyard, the streams would overflow and water would seep between the outlying cobblestones. There in those shallows, tiny frogs and fishes swam, only to be scooped out of the water by swooping kingfishers.

From the crumbled mid-yard wall, a golden-yellow butterfly lifted off a flower petal and glided into the air, as if carried by the wind. Its wings fluttered and it flew high.

High up in the sky, the clouds that obscured the morning sun melted away, surrendering to the harsh light. Thus, the sun’s radiant light came down upon the courtyard clearing, at first touching the fluttering butterfly, and at this touch, the insect’s golden-yellow wings slowly wilted, like a dying leaf, turning brown and then scattering into many small pieces. The butterfly died, and so too did the vines and blossoms and grasses on the courtyard. As one they dried and wilted and turned light brown, as if the very ground was poison to their roots.

Then, Fidel grunted as he was struck by a hot wind, a harsh gust that carried clumps of dead dry grass across the courtyard. Whatever the hell was happening…Fidel readied to equip his .45 and CQC knife while protecting his eyes from the flying dust.

“FIDEL!” someone shouted over the wind.

“Huh?!” Fidel scanned the ruins for the source of the voice.

There, standing on a pillar on the opposite side of the courtyard, was a man in a brown leather jacket and…cowboy boots. He opened his arms, spreading his hands apart in a gesture. Fidel could see no visible weapons on him…

“Who are you?!” Fidel demanded.

“I’m John Doe, the Slinger!” he said with a cocky grin. “I’m here to kill you. And unlike that Bloodsucker kid, I’m gonna get the job done.”

“Hrm,” Fidel scowled, not liking the setup at all. “You’re unarmed.”

“Of course,” the jacketed wearing gunman said, before he spun around on a cowboy boot-heel, doing a 360 and then stopping to spread his arms again. “I’m the Slinger, the gunslinger who doesn’t need a gun.” He pointed the index and middle fingers of a hand at Fidel and bent his thumb. His eyes locked with Fidel’s, and then he smiled. “Bang.”

As if in reflex, Fidel hurled himself off the marble block he was standing on, curling himself into a ball. He landed on his back, and as he felt his spine scream in pain, he used the fall’s momentum to roll back onto his feet and then lunge forward into the cover of a felled pillar.

Fidel gritted his teeth, placed a hand on his sore back, and drew his weapons of choice – equipping his .45 and CQC knife.

That man, the Slinger, had no gun but Fidel felt a bullet just narrowly missing him in that half-second it took for him to leap off the stone block. Fidel knew he had just narrowly avoided getting his brains shot out the back of his head, but the man had no gun. He just pointed with his fingers and went…

“Bang!”

Shattered stone was sent flying; Fidel could feel a bullet striking the pillar. He could even make out the ping of the round ricocheting off the rock.

“Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!”

It didn’t make any sense!



John Doe grinned. Good way to start the fight, the guy actually didn’t pull a gun out on him while he was busy talking. John shrugged, he wasn’t usually talkative, but just this once… Well, if the positions were reversed, the Slinger sure wouldn’t waste time in plugging some noisy dick full of lead – albeit invisible lead. From an invisible gun.

“Bang!” John said, for emphasis. Then he fired a couple more shots at where his mark was pinned down. “Bang! Bang!”

The Slinger flicked on his microbead radio.

“Number 13 here,” came the cold monotone of the albino arch-henchman.

“13, Slinger. I’ve found him,” John Doe reported. “I’m in some kind of ruin…anyway, I’ve got him in my sights.”

“Good. Engage him, shoot to kill.”

“Great. Tell Mister Hunt to ready my paycheck, here I come!” John exclaimed, leaping off the pillar as a flock of doves, or some kind of dove-like jungle birds, flew past him and his swirling jacket. “BOOM!”



Fidel saw the Slinger leap off the pillar, and was barely able to get his head down on time when a large chunk of pillar was pulverized by more ‘gunfire’. This time, the effect was like a shotgun blast, from what Fidel could tell, but the gunman didn’t even have a shotgun!

“This doesn’t make any sense!” Fidel growled. He peeked and the man was gone, probably changed position to advance on him – standing on top of a pillar for everyone to see, not tactically sound. Neither was letting an enemy talk on, Fidel snorted, tactically sound.

The guy was no longer in the line of sight, so Fidel took this opportunity to move to another cover, this time one of those large blocks.

Fidel panted. He checked his camouflage index, still set to chameleonic, active camouflage used bioenergy, and that was draining his stamina. Fidel switched the camo into a pre-set one that blended well with the ruin’s environment, and then assumed his CQC stance and carefully –

His earpiece was beeping. Fidel flicked on his radio.

“Fidel,” came the garbled artificially-modulated voice.

“N,” Fidel’s voice was barely a whisper. “I’m being attacked by -”

“The Slinger,” N interrupted. “He can shoot invisible bullets from an invisible gun.”

“What?!”

“He can shoot invisibullets from an invisible gun,” N repeated himself.

“No, that doesn’t…” Fidel groaned internally. “Alright. Okay. I understand. Anything else?”

“Be forewarned, other Problem-Solvers are also after you. Slinger is not the only one.”

“Thanks,” Fidel muttered as the transmission ceased, and then he said to himself: “Really useful.”

Fidel switched over to another frequency.

“Major.”

“Fidel, what’s going on?”

“I’m being engaged by a freak mercenary, someone called John Doe, the Slinger.”

The Major thought this over, and then replied: “Name doesn’t ring a bell. Must be someone new, or imported from America. A freak mercenary, you say? What are his…powers?”

“Apparently he can shoot invisibullets from an invisible gun. I think…if he says ‘bang’, he shoots out handgun-caliber bullets. When he said ‘boom’, it was more like a shotgun blast.”

“Right.” though Fidel couldn’t see it, he could see Major nodding and taking what he just said at face-value.

“Well?” Fidel asked.

“I’ve never heard of a Slinger before, Fidel,” the Major said. “If he is new, then his only advantage over you might be just his powers, and if he’s not from around here, then he’s going to be unfamiliar with jungle terrain. Bang and boom, right?”

“Huh?”

“From what you’ve said, it seems like he has to say bang and boom to shoot his invisible bullets,” the Major thought out loud. “You might want to that…counter it, so to speak.”

“Hmm…”

“In any case, he might have superpowers, but you’re not totally unequipped either,” the Major concluded. “Use your abilities, Fidel, and you’ll gain the upper hand. End the fight quickly and decisively.”

“Right,” Fidel nodded, and then killed the transmission.



Crouching low, the Fidel carefully navigated between the two rectangular blocks, leaning his back against the engraved mold-encrusted surface of the stones. It was all quiet, save for the wind and the flowing stream.

Slowly, he peeked over the corner and scanned, and saw nothing.

Fidel made a silent dash for another one of those ruined blocks, this one with an uprooted pillar draped in dead brown vines leaning precariously on to it. Fidel got down to one knee and equipped his motion sensor.

There was a blip to the eight o’ clock. The sensor didn’t pick up the terrain, it only registered motion, so Fidel had to take another peek to correlate the blip and figure out where it actually was.

Standing behind a pillar.

Fidel slowly crept towards the pillar. The motion detector showed him getting ever closer to the blip.

Fidel stepped on a loose cobblestone, it made a slight noise and Fidel almost winced.

Fidel decided to strike, moving quickly and rounding the pillar, gripping both pistol and CQC knife, ready to kill –



John Doe gazed at his tactical radar and saw, to his surprise, a sort of rippling. He had read the manual that came with the radar device and recalled that ripples were like blips, except ripples where when the radar detected other sensors being used in the area, sensors that were too primitive to mask their own emissions. At the center of that ripple would be…

In one quick motion, John hoisted himself on top of a marble block, pointed both hands forwards and went:

“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”



The rapid-fire spray sent countless of invisibullets whizzing past Fidel and he let out a yelp of surprise he ran towards the nearest form of cover. Invisibullets rammed into his chest as he leapt behind a marble monument, knocking the air out of his lungs and bruising his already battered chest. Fortunately, the Subsistence Suit incorporated light body armor, protecting Fidel from some forms of small-arms fire. Didn’t stop it from hurting like hell, though.



“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!” the Slinger went on. The auto-fire invisibullets were pulverizing stone and picking up dry dirt into the air, forming clouds of obscuring dust.

Fidel compartmentalized the pain, stuck himself out of the block’s other corner and returned fire with his .45. Silencers were less than silent and made a sound that was still louder than a person saying ‘bang’, but an unsilenced gun was truly a loud thing and with the muzzle flash, would’ve made Fidel an easier target to hit. He didn’t have an invisible gun, but at least he had a silencer.

The return fire succeeded in forcing the Slinger off his perch, his vantage point, but as before, midway through the air he let out a mighty: “BOOM!” then he panted, drew in breath, and carried on. “BOOM! Shack-a-lack-a! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!”

Invisible buckshot filled the air, forcing Fidel down into cover as the Slinger too relocated his position.

When the invisi-shotgun blasts ended, Fidel opted to dash towards another location as well. Static positions were ill-advised in the battlefield.

Fidel glanced at his motion-sensor. It was useless the last time, gave a false reading, but now it showed a moving blip that corresponded with where he suspected the Slinger was.

John Doe glanced at his tactical radar, the soliton signals were picking up the signature of Fidel’s motion-sensor.

Fidel got on top of a half-sunken block of marble, spotted a fluttering jacket, and emptied the rest of his .45.

The Slinger leapt forward and spun midair, and as things seemingly slowed down, he realigned himself, aimed both hands and went: “BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”

Fidel laid prone behind cover as invisibullets whizzed overhead. Placing the knife between his teeth, he began to crawl.

“BOOM!” the Slinger shouted, invisible buckshot filling the air like shotgunners hunting quail.

He checked his tactical radar, the man wasn’t moving. Slinger knew he had tagged him, three in the chest, somehow he could count how much of his invisibullets hit. The ripple-blips were still.

Slinger cocked his hands with a ‘click-click’ and decided to launch some oppressive fire.

“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”

Gasped, breathed in and out. Ran forward.

“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! CHACK-CHACK! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM-SHACK-A-LACK-A! BOOM! BOOM! BANG! BOOM! BOOM!”

Out of breath, mouth getting dry. Continued on.

“BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!”

John Doe leapt on top of the half-sunken block and found…

A motion-detector on the ground.

“Where the hell is he?”



“Shit,” Fidel cursed with the knife still between his teeth, realizing that he had just lost his motion detector. It was an expensive piece of equipment. Didn’t matter, he didn’t need any sensor to survive. In the battlefield…

Fidel got up to a crouch and saw Slinger just ten meters away. Fidel ejected his empty magazine and slid a new one in. There was a click as Fidel worked the slide, chambering a new round.

The Slinger heard, turned his head around, and met Fidel eye to eye.

Fidel brought his sidearm to bear as the Slinger leapt sideways. Things slowed down as Fidel squeezed the trigger in rapid succession, as the Slinger aimed his akimbo-invisiguns, as the ‘bangs’ and the ‘booms’ left his slow-moving lips and as spent brass casings were ejected from Fidel’s pistol.

In a swift motion, the Slinger rolled sideways and disappeared behind another ruin.

Fidel ejected the spent magazine, cautiously moved towards where the Slinger had just been, and found the motion detector. Found it right where the Slinger had stood mere seconds ago.

Motion detectors were active sensors, Fidel recalled. They detected motion by letting out pulses of sound, and those pulses could be detected as well.

Fide deactivated the device and unequipped it.

Now it’s going to be a fair fight, Fidel thought, and then the pillar right beside his head exploded in a shower of pulverized ancient masonry – shotgun-blasted by invisibuckshots.

Fidel hit the ground and got onto his back, crawled using his feet to push his body backwards, and getting behind the half-sunken marble block for cover. He took a quick peek, before the air was literally filled with a rain of invisible buckshots and exploding rock and pulverizing dry dead plants.

“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!” the Slinger shouted with all his might, pumping and blasting with an invisible shotgun. There, he stood atop a standing-segment of wall that bisected the courtyard’s center. “BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!”

“Guy wants to shout,” Fidel growled, then he unscrewed the silencer and got up to one knee. As the Slinger shouted and fired shotgun-blasts from each hand, Fidel took careful aim amidst the flying debris and buckshots and fired a double-tap. No shout or cry of ‘boom’ could match the echoing retort of the unsilenced .45 rounds, and Fidel grinned in satisfaction as the Slinger gave out a yelp of pain and fell off the wall like a sack of potatoes.

“Now it’s going to be a fair fight,” Fidel repeated himself. Now the hunter was the hunted, and the chase became the pursuit.

Fidel re-attached the silencer and carefully, but quickly, made his way to the wall.



The Slinger panted. He was running out of breath and blood trickled down from somewhere in his body. He cursed, his jacket was ruined. He took it off, found a two holes, one at the sleeve and another at its side, looked down to his chest at the corresponding body part and saw the side of his abdomen was bloodying up.

“Shit,” he cursed and staggered. “Jacket’s ruined.”

John Doe checked his tactical radar and noticed two things. Fidel had switched off his motion detector, the clever bastard. And his mouth was really dry.

He could hear a stream nearby. He was really thirsty.



After scouring the maze-like courtyard and finding nothing, Fidel decided to search the perimeter of the area instead. Silently, he made his way, careful not to step on the wet puddles where the water seeped amidst the cobblestones. Nearby, one of the streams bubbled and flowed, its surface glistening in the harsh sunlight.

Dragonflies buzzed over its surface, some of them hovering in place, others zipping from one place to the next.

Overhead, the clouds had once more obscured the jungle from the harsh sun.

The vines that laced a nearby marble pillar was no longer dry and dying and wilting, but once more became verdant green.

Fidel saw the brown jacket and spared no hesitation, immediately firing three silent shots at the center mass before he even realized that the jacket was being worn by a small tree.

“Bang.”

A flash of white pain blinded Fidel as he felt the invisibullet’s impact on his shoulder blade, the kinetic force jerking him to do a half-pirouette, sending his ass to the ground. He grunted in pain, his weapons fell beyond his reach.

The Slinger dawned over him, pointing an outstretched index and middle finger at his face.

“Why don’t you die?” the freak mercenary asked. Then, with finality: “Ba-”


Like a cobra, Fidel lunged at him in an explosion of ferocity. Fidel twisted Slinger’s hand, disarming him. The Slinger yelled in pain and then brought his other hand, also with two outstretched fingers, to Fidel’s temple. But before he could say anything, Fidel rammed his own hand into the Slinger’s open mouth, and he gripped the gunman’s tongue as hard as he could.

The Slinger tried to let off a shot, but he couldn’t. His remaining hand made feeble clicking noise, but couldn’t fire.

He tried to bite the hand that was in his mouth, sink his teeth in hard.

Fidel winced.

Click.

Click.

Fidel twisted, despite the thirty-odd teeth cutting into the flesh of his hand and fingers.

John Doe tried to scream, tried to bite harder, muffled cries choking in his throat, his free hand trying to pry that vice-like mandible claw off his mouth. He couldn’t, so he tried choking Fidel, but couldn’t, and so he struck the man’s face, clawed, tried to gouge the eyes. The muffled cries and screams that choked in his throat intensified, his eyes were wide open in alarm and fear. He clawed at Fidel’s face, tried to gouge the eyes.

Fidel pulled hard.

There was a horrible wordless scream of pain and anguish as blood and spit spewed out of John Doe, the Slinger’s mouth, flowed out of his mouth so much like water from that nearby stream. He screamed, tears coming out of his eyes, and he fell to his knees and looked up. Looked up at the man who had his tongue in his hands.

Fidel held that slippery bloody thing in his hands, regarded it with disgust, and threw it into the stream.

“Fetch.”

[Crazedwraith]

OMG! That was brutal, man! He ripped Slinger's Tongue out of his head! It seems John was not used to prolonged combat, relying on the strangeness of his abilities to win fights, near instantly, elsewise he'd havewater on hand to keep his throat wet and/or better fire control. But I suppose having unlimited mental ammunition will do that to a guy.

And the previous fight scenes were totally awesome as well. Especially firing through impaled corpses. Total madness man.

[Sidewinder]

Slowly and carefully, Mendoza took the torn vine with his hands. It looked like it had been cut by a blade. He looked forward and saw none of the mercs ahead, and remembered that they weren’t using their machetes.

Then he saw something else, a broken branch, which told him that someone had just passed by recently. He looked down and saw what looked like a footprint in the mud.

When I read this, I expected the cut vine to be a lure, and that a booby trap would kill or cripple Mendoza. Nonetheless, I like how Fidel went all MacGuyver on the mercenaries, using the rations can to make them stop shooting at him.

By the way, why didn't Fidel simply cut open the Slinger's throat? If I were him, I wouldn't leave the troubleshooter alive and still able to attack, even if the Slinger can only use his hands, feet, and teeth.

[Ford Prefect]

By the way, why didn't Fidel simply cut open the Slinger's throat? If I were him, I wouldn't leave the troubleshooter alive and still able to attack, even if the Slinger can only use his hands, feet, and teeth.

Probably because Slinger isn't Shroomy's character to kill; Slinger was actually created by Crazedwraith. The Problem Solvers are all characters developed by other people in the shared OZ Comix! universe.

[Crazedwraith]

By the way, why didn't Fidel simply cut open the Slinger's throat? If I were him, I wouldn't leave the troubleshooter alive and still able to attack, even if the Slinger can only use his hands, feet, and teeth.

Probably because Slinger isn't Shroomy's character to kill; Slinger was actually created by Crazedwraith. The Problem Solvers are all characters developed by other people in the shared OZ Comix! universe.

True and also because Shroomie has... plans for the character.

And I'm utterly appalled the line, 'The Slinger! The Slinger! I see it! The Slinger!' *John explodes* wasn't used. Shame on you!

[Sidewinder]

True and also because Shroomie has... plans for the character.

What kind of plans? Genetic enhancements to transform John Doe into a werewolf or something? Cybernetic implants to transform him into a low budget Terminator?

Anyways, will John Doe jump into the stream to find his tongue and hope EVIL's doctors can reattach it, or will he be getting an Ultravoice?

[Crazedwraith]

True and also because Shroomie has... plans for the character.

What kind of plans? Genetic enhancements to transform John Doe into a werewolf or something? Cybernetic implants to transform him into a low budget Terminator?

I honestly don't know. Other than he gets his own post Dino Eater tale. That way I can be pleasantly surprised. I wasn't planing to do anything with the character myself, so Shroomy has free range. while the things you suggest do sound like his style. I'm think he's going to restore and improve his original abilities.

[JointStrikeFighter]

I. WANT. JOHN. DOE'S. POWER!

GIVE ME JOHN DOE'S POWERZ RIGHT NOW !

*makes guncocking noises in the meantime*

[Shroom Man 777]

*RIPS JSF'S TONGUE OFF*



John Doe, the Slinger, will be appearing in a pseudo-sequel where he goes back home to America and gets into deep shit. And since a cat's got his tongue, it's gonna be a lot like Grand Theft Auto 3 - with The Guy!

[Big Orange]

Jesus-titty-fucking-Christ, that was Jesus-titty-fucking-Christ amazing!!

John Doe had me stitches with his special power of firing psychic bullets from the tip of his finger while shouting 'Bang' like a ten year old - that was fucking funny.

I'm also puzzled why Fidel didn't decide to finnish off such a dangerous mutant when just five minutes earlier he practically wiped out a small army of goons chasing him.

[Shroom Man 777]

Fidel's not the type who goes around shooting bodies to make sure they're all dead. If he's in a fight and shoots you dead, then you're dead. If he's in a fight and shoots you in the nuts and you end up bleeding and just lying there unable to do anything, he's not gonna walk up to you and plug you between the eyes. Hell, if you throw down your gun and raise your hands, he'll probably just take your gun, break your radio, and leave you there (in the middle of the godforsaken jungle).

Anyway, here's a little artses I made:



EDIT:

It has him shouting BANG!, but I had to cut it off since the rest of the paper is filled with un-finished artses

[Ford Prefect]

John Doe had me stitches with his special power of firing psychic bullets from the tip of his finger while shouting 'Bang' like a ten year old - that was fucking funny.

Don't forget he can produce shotgun effects by saying 'boom'. The Slinger has one of the most creative powers in all of OZ Comix!, really.

[Shroom Man 777]

GENTLEMEN....BEHOLD!



Problem Solved

These are the blokes Fidel's gonna take on, one by one.

[darthdavid]

Great story man. You rock.

[Shroom Man 777]

[And mad props for Invictus of OmniverseZero for contributing the Reckoner POV shots]




The albinic visage of Number 13, normally utterly emotionless and devoid of color, was lit by the eerie glow of consoles, tele-screens and HD-holos, visually displayed data reflecting off the arch-henchman’s pigmentless facial features. The hardhat operating the console 13 was hunched over tried his best to maintain his professional composure, withholding the urge to squirm visibly in the presence of the albino’s silent rage.

There was a burst of static, followed by garbled muffled sounds, and then pained whimpering.

“Slinger,” the hardhat called out to the radio. “Respond.”

“What’s the matter?” another hardhat quipped as he passed by. “Cat got his tongue?”

At the glare of 13’s soulless blue eyes, the passing goon quickly made himself scarce.

“Slinger,” the operator-hardhat repeated himself. “What’s your status? Report.”

Number 13 straightened himself up and crossed his arms. The only response was more of the same incoherent blubbering cries of pain, which went on and on until, at 13’s silent command, Jonathan ended the transmission. The command trailer fell silent, becoming quiet as, ever so subtly, the wafting aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the interior of the trailer, lingering in the self-contained reprocessed and purified atmosphere.

Number 13, still with his back straight and arms crossed, turned around to find Marcus Elliot Hunt, clad in casual pastel attire as opposed to the traditional business suit and with a cup of steaming coffee in hand, walking towards him.

“13, have the Problem Solvers got rid of that interloping intruder yet?” the corporate man asked casually as he carefully took a sip of coffee and made a face. “Too hot.”

“No,” 13 replied.

“And why not?” Elliot Hunt raised an eyebrow.

“The Slinger has been neutralized,” Number 13 said this like a man casually telling the time or the date, or a man writing off an expendable asset.

Hunt shook his head slightly. “That spy, Fidel Castro was his name? He’s proving himself to be rather competent, and rather troublesome. He’s already taken down Theodore once… and now John Doe.” He blew the steam off his cup, trying to cool the hot liquid down. After a few seconds, he took another sip. “Hm, better. Inform the rest of the Problem Solvers that whoever gets the elusive Mr. Castro will be rewarded with an increase in his or her salary,” he pointed to the operator-hardhat. “You, what’s your name?”

“I’m Jonathan, sir,” the hardhat said hesitantly, adjusting his hardhat as he prepared to relay the orders.

“Make sure the frequency’s calibrated so that the mercs can listen in,” Hunt confided. “It might motivate some of them to work overtime.”

“Yes sir.”

“And please, do have someone recover John Doe. Find out what’s happened to him.”



John Doe clutched his bloodied mouth as a foul mix of blood and saliva poured out like water from a pitcher. He wiped the mess on his jacket, now almost totally smeared in blood and spit. He staggered weakly and then, after steadying himself against a tree, continued his run with partially renewed resolve.

It was a pain he had never felt before. He had been shot at, stabbed at, spat at with acid blood, clawed at with retractable claws, but never before had he –

- tripped on a root or a vine and hit the ground with his face.

He tried to crawl up, reaching for something that’d give him purchase. Just a few meters away, he saw the flowing stream – its currents carrying his severed tongue far away downstream.

John Doe rolled onto his back. Then, with tears in his eyes and bloody spit dribbling out of his mouth, he let out an incoherent scream, a cry of anguish and pain that echoed beyond the jungle canopy.



The Reckoner slipped carefully down the moss-covered cobblestones, keeping his rifle stable against his shoulder. He had considered the possibility of his target still being in the area, where the lack of undergrowth would makes his ghillie suit stand out. This priority was weighed against his employers’ mention of additional rewards, as well as his desire to investigate the scream he had heard coming from the creek – it was definitely Slinger’s voice, as the Reckoner remembered from aboard the VTOL aircraft. But there was something…wrong about the timbre of it, outside the expected pain and panic.

Unknown factors meant anomalies in snug and comfortable patterns of data, mental needles in cotton wool. The Reckoner felt the need to satisfy his curiosity, to learn of the new knowledge and alleviate the growing sense of wrongness. And if he bumped into the target along the way, he did not rate his chances too poorly.

With that, he settled on taking a roundabout path towards the sound, weaving low and cautiously between the rocky ruins. The pillars and blocks were probably Incan, as the tattered cloth of his suit brushed against their rain-worn patterns, but he couldn’t tell. It was another niggling annoyance that he pushed to the back of his mind – yes, they were probably Incan because they were in South America, but he wasn’t sure. There are already too many things in the world he wasn’t sure about.

Sounds of struggling movement. The gurgling of water. The Reckoner turned a corner, rifle raised; and saw John Doe, covered in red, trying to claw himself upright. No signs of traps or hiding places. He flipped his tri-goggles briefly to infrared, noted the untidy splotches of warm blood that glowed fluorescent all over the place, but most importantly the cooling trail.

The Reckoner lowered his gun slightly and approached the ailing man. Back on the transport he remembered John Doe as an unremarkable man with features as unremarkable as his name, although, he reminded himself, it didn’t mean that he was entirely normal either. The power to shoot invisible bullets from invisible guns was something he spent a long time trying to square, and eventually placed alongside a large box of other conundrums.

But here John Doe had run into the target, Fidel Castro…and was still alive. John Doe was impossible to disarm, simple logic said. To neutralize his fighting capability, he would have to be either incapacitated by severe injury, or mutilated in some way…

John Doe noticed the Reckoner approaching and his mouth flapped open, spilling dark blood. His throat made sharp, inarticulate noises.

The Reckoner opened the radio channel to 13. “I have located the target’s trail. I have also made contact with Slinger. His tongue has been removed. Otherwise, he is fine. Instructions?”

The albino’s cold voice replied after a short pause, “This is the second Problem Solver who has been neutralized, and we have lost contact with the mercenary patrols. Do not pursue him alone. Relay your position to the other Problem Solvers. You will coordinate to track down Fidel Castro.”

*click*

The other Problems Solvers. They would be useful in hunting down the target, significantly improve the probability of success considering his extrapolated prowess. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were all so unpredictable, the Reckoner thought as John Doe staggered towards him for help. Invisible bullets. The woman filled with deceit. The sullen telepath. The nauseatingly insane one. He imagined himself working with them, trying to anticipating their responses, while facing such a formidable opponent who demanded no mistakes – that thought was almost unbearable, like an ocean opening up beneath his feet.

Making little pleading noises, John Doe stumbled and pawed for his arm, and the Reckoner could feel the impact of each slick fingertip. A calculated shrug altered his posture slightly, so the mutilated man found no purchase and fell hard on the ground as the Reckoner started to jog after the heat signature of Fidel Castro’s footsteps. He ignored John Doe’s imploring eyes. The man had been driven irrational by pain and shock. He still had his legs. He could walk.



It was still morning, though the sun was quickly reaching that zenith in the sky that marked the noon. Fidel trudged on, perhaps carelessly with no more mercs trailing him, though there were still those ‘Problem Solvers’, no doubt the rest of them were also freak mercenaries with abilities as bizarre as shooting invisible bullets. From invisible guns.

Fidel grimaced. His chest was badly bruised, though his Subsistence Suit had a layer of low-level body armor that prevented the invisibullets from penetrating, the impacts still left their marks. The fact that his torso had just recently recuperated from a point-blank shotgunning (with rocksalt) didn’t help. At least, Fidel consoled himself, he didn’t have to do any survival viewing - pry out the invisibullets with his survival knife, suture the wounds up, styptic and disinfect, and then wrap it up with bandages. He would’ve spent half the day trying to dig out the invisible bullets with his knife if not for his suit’s limited armor. Maybe the invisibullets were still on him, flattened, deformed and stuck on the Subsistence Suit. Fidel had no way to know.

Fidel trudged on, sticking to the shadows and avoiding the wounds in the canopy where the harsh sunlight bled in; though this time, he did it mostly to avoid the heat rather than to be stealthy.

The path uphill was becoming a steep incline. For a while, Fidel had followed the stream where he had left Slinger, followed it upstream, which the map indicated would lead him to increasingly more irregular terrain. If he continued on directly, the straightest route being the shortest, he would end up at the rendezvous point by mid-afternoon. There was something else, too. His path would take him to an outpost where some of the merc patrols were garrisoned. Hopefully, it was well stocked.

The outpost itself was on the other side of the hill, at its base. While Fidel could’ve easily gone around the hill, sparing himself the trouble of navigating the incline, the hilltop was a perfect vantage point for reconnaissance. Fidel finally reached the top and was about to pull out his binoculars when –

Hesitantly, he flicked on his radio.

“Major…”

“Fidel, what is it? Have you rendezvous with N yet?”

“No… I haven’t.”

“Then what is it? You know Fidel, even if our transmissions are heavily encoded, the enemy could still be listening in. Your position could be compromised if the enemy is able to triangulate your radio signals…”

“Major… I found the Enriques,” Fidel said. At the top of the hill was a massive tree, its thick branches spreading outwards and reaching up to the sky. It had no leaves because it was dead, though vines crept and slithered up along its bone-dry bark. Amidst its branches, so much like clawing fingers of black wood, was the wreckage of a rickety single-engine Cessna. Its wings had been ripped off with its tail rudder, and along the fuselage were vicious gashes that leaked fuel, bleeding wounds…torn open by claws. The cockpit’s windshield was broken open, with only jagged shards of glass remaining at the edges. Fidel dared to look at what was inside and found two identical corpses, with the flesh peeled off their bones.

“What’s their status?” the Major asked. “Fidel?”

“They’re dead.”

Overhead, the clouds grew dark.

Fidel climbed up and scavenged whatever he could from the wreckage, but he didn’t find much. A flare gun, an extra pair of binoculars and some maps were all Fidel could rummage. The company of the Enriques was distinctly discomforting, since a day ago they were just merrily ferrying him on their rickety plane and now they were grinning skeletonized corpses. Fidel didn’t stay too long in the plane, again he kicked the door open and jumped out.

It began to rain. Light droplets hitting the plane’s aluminum hull, making soft pattering sounds. There was something underneath that sound though; Fidel could barely make it out. The sound of footfalls in the mud.

They were too close, so Fidel hid behind the tree and hoped they wouldn’t find him.



Mateo slung his rifle over his shoulders as he made his way up the hill. With the ground getting slippery and wet, he had to steady himself and plant his feet firmly with every single step. He didn’t want to slip and roll all the way down the hill. He nearly did though, when he stepped on a rock that had been loosened by the water.

“Hey, watch out!” Andre scolded, grabbing Mateo’s arm to steady him.

“Thanks…” Mateo muttered as he regained his footing and continued on upwards. It didn’t take long for them to find the crashed plane.

“Jesus…I wonder how long it’s been here,” Andre uttered. “I mean, if it’s been here all along, we would’ve noticed it, right?”

“Right,” Mateo muttered.

”And if it just got here…” Andre wondered. “How come none of us heard it crash? Mateo?”

“The flesh’s been peeled off their bones,” Mateo observed, pointing at the cockpit.

“Christ…”

“They’ve been dead for a while,” Mateo continued. “So no one could’ve opened the door and gone out.”

He pointed at the opened door, and then at something on the ground. Andre scratched his head. “Whose footprints are these?”

Mateo circled the tree but found only more ambiguous footprints. “We’re not alone,” he muttered, unslinging his SVD sniper rifle.



Luis stood on the porch and took a deep breath, savoring the coolness of the light rain and noticing a slight rainbow arcing over the nearby hill. He and five others were manning the lonely outpost, which had room to accommodate quite a few men (if they couldn’t fit, they could always pitch tents in the mud) but served primarily as a storehouse. It had supplies for patrols that would spend days out in the jungle, food, rations, guns and ammunition. In fact, it was rather well stocked, and Luis made sure of that. What contraband the guys couldn’t keep in the main installations, or didn’t want to share with the gringo goons with the silly plastic hats, they could procure from Luis.

He ran a smooth operation, part pawnshop and part barter economy, from tequila to tripwires. Despite his short stature and weak body, he was a go-to guy. And while the other mercs stationed in the outpost quickly rushed off to find the intruder, emboldened by the promise of rewards, Luis and his retinue was content to stay inside their own fortified castle and listen to the radio as the other guys were getting killed off.

Luis was thinking (because he was smart) and calculated that the now-deceased Meralco’s RPGs, which he kept in the storehouse, could be sold for quite a few cases of tequila.

The thought made him happy and made him want to relieve himself, so he walked over to the back of the building, where they had dug a hole for that explicit purpose.

The man previously manning the hole, Ramon, zipped his fly as he brushed past Luis.

“Did you leave the toilet seat up?” Luis joked.

“Heh. Just be careful, some Cuban might slit your throat while you take a piss,” Ramon retorted. “Have a safe shit.”

Luis snorted and held up his M4 carbine, complete with modular SOPMOD attachments. He grinned cockily. “I’ve got my safety right here, puta.”

Aside from that, the only way into their outpost was a dirt path being watched by their lookout, and electric fences surrounded the outpost. Besides fences, there were other surprises for anyone sneaking about in the bushes.

“Just don’t forget to flush.”

Luis laughed.



There was a dirt path leading down to the outpost, but Fidel didn’t take it. It was devoid of cover, anyone looking could spot anyone walking down the path from a hundred meters off.

Instead, Fidel went low amongst the underbrush that surrounded the path. He took out his binoculars and reconnoitered. The outpost was a modest building, its base was made out of rock or cement, it was probably built on one of those stone ruins, but Fidel couldn’t tell. The building itself was made out of wood, mostly planks and plywood, while the roof was corrugated sheet metal. Surrounding it were electric fences, but it wasn’t gated – though walking past it undetected was going to be another matter entirely. Fidel could make out movement around the outpost, not big enough to be humans, could be guard dogs.

Fidel cursed inwardly and tried to see if he was downwind or not, then he zoomed in with his scopes and was astonished. Chickens, not guard dogs. Each one with a leg tied to a rope so they couldn’t get too far away from their little chicken houses and peck on the fences.

Fidel wondered…but it made sense. If ever the mercs in the outpost were short on supplies or wanted an omelet…

Fidel saw a merc coming out from behind the building. For a second, the merc looked straight at Fidel, and Fidel froze still. Then the merc walked over to the building’s porch and settled himself on a hammock.

Fidel breathed a sigh of relief.

After five minutes of stillness, Fidel got onto his belly and undulated downwards – barely moving his arms and legs and, instead, just sliding on the dead leaves that littered the jungle floor so densely. It was a smooth and silent motion, but also a slow and painstaking one. As he crept down that slippery slope, the sky gradually cleared up and the ceasing rain was replaced by scintillating beams of glistening sunlight.

Half an hour later, Fidel finally reached level ground. Slowly did he crawl, this time the thinning foliage forcing him to keep his belly off the ground, using his arms and knees to push himself forward. He would have to crawl on like this for dozens of meters in a stamina-consuming ordeal.

Low-lying foliage brushed past his face, their wet leaves smearing his face with dew-like precipitations leftover from the rain, dribbling down and accumulating on his moustache. He lapped the moisture with his tongue to quench his thirst. It didn’t take long for Fidel to be totally and completely soaked, and combined with the jungle humidity, things quickly became very uncomfortable.

With his right hand, Fidel wiped the moisture off his eyes, and then resumed crawling. He reached his hand forward and then stopped breathing.

There, just inches away from his sweating face, was a thin line, almost invisible but for the little pear-like droplets of water that were on it. Fidel examined it very carefully. A thin steel wire, on one end it was tied to a plant’s firm root, on the other it was tied to the pin of a pineapple grenade that was half-buried in the ground. With one hand, Fidel made sure that the grenade’s pin was secure, and with his other, he equipped his CQC knife and severed the tripwire. Fidel collected the grenade and the wire, but nonetheless, he still couldn’t breathe easy.

Where there was one, there was many.

Fidel crept forward with renewed caution, placing his knife between his teeth in case of any more tripwires.

In a nearby bush was a claymore, a rectangular piece of metal filled with steel pellet-ingrained plastic explosive. This one was also linked to a tripwire, but it wasn’t alone. At the opposite end of the wire was a hand grenade, half-buried in the ground like the previous one. After Fidel collected the claymore, he dug out the grenade and examined it. Unlike the previous one, this wasn’t a frag, it was a CS grenade – teargas. Probably meant to blind whoever survived the blast, have them wander around and step on more boobytraps…

“Devious,” Fidel said to no one in particular. Carefully, he went about disarming them before checking if the munitions were safe, then he pocketed both the grenade and the claymore.

A dozen meters later, Fidel noticed a mound of soil that looked suspiciously like something had just been buried recently. Upon excavating it with his knife, he found an anti-personnel landmine – of the specific variant designed to detonate upon tampering.

Fidel wiped his face and exclaimed silently: “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Fidel shook his head. If there were any more of these up ahead… He began scooping handfuls of soil and smearing it onto his face and head. Then, slowly, he crawled his way to the dirt path, made sure no one was watching, and then crawled on the mine-less ground.

He activated his camouflage index and, once again, set it to active chameleonic. The Subsistence Suit then blended seamlessly with the muddy path, and with the back of his head thoroughly smeared in dirt, Fidel was indistinguishable from the mud itself.



Luis pulled up his pants, zipped his zipper, and he washed his hands with alcohol. Then he took a sip from his hip flask, just to make himself feel better, and swore. It must’ve been something from breakfast, Luis reasoned to himself. He slinged his M4 SOPMOD over his shoulder and slowly walked to the front of the outpost.

A chicken clucked by his feet and, without any provocation whatsoever, he kicked it spitefully, sending it flying for more than thirteen seconds. He laughed and decided to go back into the outpost. It was nearly noon, the sun was getting hot. Maybe next time, he’d barter a heavy machinegun for an air-conditioner.

He passed by Ramon, who was sleeping on his hammock. Luis tapped the guy on his shoulder, making his hat fall off his face, and was just about to walk inside.

“You look dead tired,” Luis muttered as he bent down to pick Ramon’s hat up. “Here’s your-”

Ramon’s eyes were wide open and blood was dripping off from the side of his mouth. If the hat hadn’t fallen off his face, Luis would’ve never noticed that he was dead.

“Shit,” he hissed. He shouldered his M4 and turned off the safeties. “Got my safety right here…” he nervously reassured himself as he slowly opened the door and snuck in. “Shit…shit…shit!”

Scattered all over the floor were four bodies. Luis, despite his current mental state, couldn’t help but wonder how all of them were dispatched without his knowing it. Once again, he cursed – and this one was a very long one, involving Our Lady of Guadalupe.

He reached for his radio but stopped. If the intruder heard him calling for help, it would be over… Luis tightened his grip on his weapon. He had to take the initiative; the guy didn’t know what was coming. The building had two rooms, the first one had the bunks, the second one was where they kept all the supplies. Luis scowled, no one was going to get away with his stash. No one.



Fidel sifted through the supplies and felt like he was in some kind of store. There were canned food rations, ammunition, first aid kits, explosive ordnances… he made sure to pocket a few of the grenades, claymores and anti-personnel mines. There was an abundance of AK-47s, so he got one and four additional clips – a hundred and sixty rounds in total. There was a tin of milk, which he pocketed, and a half-eaten bar of chocolate, which he finished. He stuffed the equipment he got into some tactical web gear, which, like everything else, didn’t belong to him.

He was about to take a swag off a tequila bottle when the door was smashed open.

“Freeze motherfucker!” the merc screamed, pointing the gun dead center at Fidel’s head.

Fidel winced, the weapon’s laser dot-sight was pointed directly at his eyes. The man lowered his aim to Fidel’s chest, relieving Fidel’s eyes and allowing him to see and assess the merc. Short and weak, nervous, jumpy, might pull the trigger at any second. The man was armed with an M4 carbine…

The blood-red laser dot hovered above the center of Fidel’s chest. Luis narrowed his eyes and said one word: “Die!”

*click*

Luis stared at his gun in abject horror just as Fidel drew his CQC knife and silenced .45. But before Fidel could strike, Luis threw his M4 SOPMOD away like a venomous snake.

“I’m unarmed!” he pleaded (because he was smart). “Please don’t kill me!”

Fidel was genuinely surprised by this.

“Please don’t-”

“Give me your radio!” Fidel barked. He pointed his pistol at the merc’s face, causing the man to flinch. To get his point across, Fidel fired a shot that reduced the door hinge beside the man’s head into splinters. “Now!”

Luis threw Fidel his walkie talkie. Fidel caught it and pocketed it.

“Go over to the corner and face the wall,” Fidel ordered. If he just left the guy as he was, or even if he restrained him, he could still run out and warn the two mercs at the hill. And sooner or later, if those two mercs at the hill didn’t find anything, and they won’t, they were still going to come back to the outpost anyway. Fidel had an idea. “Turn around.”

Luis turned around to face his captor. Then Fidel shot him in the foot. Luis fell to one knee and was in the process of howling in pain when Fidel nearly shoved the .45’s silencer into his mouth.

“W-what are you going to do to me?” Luis pleaded.

“Do you want to die?” Fidel asked casually.

“No!” Luis exclaimed. “Please-”

“Then shut up…” Fidel said as he picked a landmine off the table and tied it to a tripwire. Then he tied that tripwire firmly to a beam on the ceiling. “…and hold this.”

“Shit!” Luis cursed as he got up, nearly fell due to his bleeding foot, and then held the dangling mine with an outstretched hand while struggling to stand on one and a half foot/feet. “You crazy fuck! What the hell are you trying to do?”

“Keeping you in one place,” Fidel muttered as he gathered his things into his new tactical webbing, wore it and slinged his new AK-47 over his shoulder. “You have to hold that thing up high, make sure the wire isn’t tripped. You can’t move it anywhere without pulling the wire and you can’t reach up to cut the wire since you’re too short. You could pull it now and kill us both, but you don’t want to die.”

Luis cursed - and this one was even longer, involving Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Fatima.



Fidel made his exit, jogging on another dirt trail that led around a hill that was behind the outpost. He checked his watch and gave himself at best an hour before someone would know what had just happened. Probably less. If the merc didn’t stub his big toe and explode.

Speaking of explosions, as soon as the dirt trail ended, Fidel spared no time in scouring the area for hidden death traps, though he would ultimately find none.



Mateo and Andre entered the outpost to find five of their friends dead and Luis desperately clinging onto a landmine tied to the ceiling.

“What the hell is this?!” Andre exclaimed, grabbing a pair of pliers from the table and cutting the tripwire. “What the hell happened?!”

“It was Fidel Castro!” Luis cried.

Mateo shook his head in disgust.

“Why didn’t you radio us?”

“I couldn’t…” Luis sputtered. “He had it…and…”

Mateo tapped Andre’s shoulder. “Come on, before he gets too far.”

“Aren’t you going to call for backup?” Luis asked feebly.

“And share the reward with the rest of you pricks?” Andre asked rhetorically. “No way. You were listening to the radio, you heard how Eduardo and Mendoza and all their guys got taken down. We’d have more luck working on our own.”

“But you can’t-”

“If you want to call for help,” Mendoza pointed his Dragunov at him. “Then go.”

“I don’t have a radio!”

“Then walk!” Andre spat. With Luis left behind, both sniper and spotter left the outpost and ran after their target.



Fidel panted. After painstakingly searching the jungle around him for mines, he found none and decided to move on. With the sun getting higher and higher, and the jungle getting hotter and hotter, Fidel took a sip off his canteen and decided to take a rest.

A ten-minute break wouldn’t be too much to ask for, Fidel reasoned, having spent the entire day getting tortured, escaping lairs, evading patrols and engaging entire squads of mercs in mortal combat, not to mention the occasional freak mercenary. Fidel found a small ditch and simply crawled in and covered himself up in a natural blanket – a torn tree branch adorned with dead leaves.

It didn’t take long at all for the exhaustion to catch up with him. When a man pushes himself too hard, he gets tired and sometimes he doesn’t even know how tired he is - even if he’s been given a supersoldier serum or a vectored treatment. Fidel closed his eyes and fell asleep.



When the trail ended, Andre and Mateo spared no time in locating a suitable sniping position. With the irregular terrain, they naturally opted for the high ground.

“Are you sure the place isn’t mined?” Andre asked as he took out his binoculars.

Mateo nodded as he attached the laser sight to his SVD. “We’ll take sniping positions on that ridge.”

It was the highest point in the whole area, and from that vantage point they could see everything.



Fidel woke up to the sound of snapping twigs and rustling leaves. He didn’t jolt upright or immediately get up on his feet, instead he waited and listened. After five minutes of nothing, he pushed the tree branch off and got up, and then he realized that he had spent too much time sleeping.



“I see something…two o’ clock, down there. It’s him.”

Mateo regulated his breathing and slowly, ever so gently, brought his precision weapon to bear. He took a deep breath and then held his lungs empty as the crosshairs lined up, as the red-dot of the laser sight aligned itself…

“Fire…fire…fire.”

Mateo took the shot.



The laser beam was all but invisible, save for those scintillating glimmers of coherent red light that scythed through the thick and humid expanse of jungle between sniper and target. A fraction of a second was all it took for Fidel to notice it right before it painted his forehead red with light. Then, in that instant when a bullet began its nine hundred meter per second terminal flight, Fidel collapsed down to one knee. Fidel saw the muzzle flash, felt lead travel through that portion of space occupied by his head just a few seconds ago, and then heard the crack of gunfire – Dragunov, SVD.

The muscles of his legs tightened, and then Fidel ran as fast as he could as precision fire aimed at where he used to be, where he was, and where he was heading made whizzing, hissing and snapping noises while causing little explosions of dirt and mud and bark. Fidel lunged forward and twisted his body, hitting the wet mud with the side of his body and messily skidding on it. He aimed his new AK-47 at the point of origin and fired off three clean bursts of three shots each just before his horizontal slide brought him behind an unsuitably decomposed tree. Whoever it was on the other side, he was persistent, firing two more shots that punched tiny holes through Fidel’s apparently rotten cover. Fidel gritted his teeth and wasted no time as he rummaged through the pockets of his newly acquired tactical webbing and equipped himself with a smoke grenade. He tossed it over the tree and waited as the area was sufficiently saturated with white smoke, till the circulating particulates reflected the no longer so invisible laser’s crimson path, saw the beam sweep to the far side as the sniper expended his ten-shot mag… Fidel bolted.

There was no way Fidel could engage them both (for a sniper was never without his spotter) from this range, with their superior position and superior range. He could run and just die tired… or do something unexpected. Fidel knew that snipers changed firing positions after giving away their positions, and that every sniper plans secondary positions before every battle…

Fidel unequipped his AK-47, and drew his CQC knife and silenced .45.



Luis limped as fast as he could, sweating profusely as his AK-47 (he ditched his M4) dangled by its sling. He panted and gasped and hoped to hell that by this time tomorrow, there wouldn’t be any worms or maggots crawling over his wounded foot. He looked behind him, just to be absolutely sure that no one was sneaking up behind him. Then he looked forward and heard the sound of flowing water.

He clawed his way past several bushes and found the stream. All he had to do was follow its currents down and he’d inevitably run into one of the patrols.

Luis half-ran and half-jogged with faster resolve, not noticing the spilt blood on the cobblestones, nor the root protruding from between the stones.

He tripped, fell, and hit the ground with his face.

As he struggled to return to his feet, he looked up and beheld a looming dark figure gazing down at him with an absolute contempt reserved only for the most insignificant of insects.

Luis staggered, trying to keep the weight off his ruined foot, and tried to avoid the terrible gaze of that freak…

Theodore Coleman, the Bloodsucker, smiled viciously as he heard the scared and injured man’s thoughts. His grin and his dark baleful eyes contrasted with the dried blood that ran down his face like ruined mascara.

“Where did he go?” he asked the staggering man. Where is Fidel Castro?

Luis tried to think and remembered the direction where Andre and Mateo went in their pursuit. He opened his mouth to speak –

“Thank you Luis,” Ted said, his tone dripping with insincere appreciation. Then his dark eyes pierced through Luis’ very being like a scalpel slowly making its way across the wrist, delicately cutting through tender young flesh, savoring the cold sharp steel as it severed the veins, letting the blood flow out – slowly at first, but growing faster with each beat of the heart. Ted liked what he saw.

From his eyes, ears, nose and mouth, prodigious quantities of blood poured out of every hole in Luis’ body. Uncontrolled vasodilatation, ruptures, hemorrhages, and aneurysms. Luis tried to speak, only to gurgle and choke in the fluids that filled his lungs. His eyes rolled back into his skull and he fell to his knees. Contractions wracked his dying body and he reached out desperately, grabbing his killer by the shirt in a final death grip.

The Bloodsucker dislodged the dying man with a hard kick, but the dead man wouldn’t let go and tore Ted’s shirt clean off, exposing his lean chest. But the young sadist didn’t mind, as his trench coat waved and fluttered in the nonexistent wind. He looked up and laughed, and then screamed in an unnatural voice that permeated the jungle.

“FIDEL!” his voice echoed. “It’s not over yet!”



Something sudden yet imperceptible frightened a flock of resting birds, prompting them to take flight off a nearby tree while filling the air with sharp screeches, distracting the Reckoner from his weapon. With efficient precision, he quickly re-examined his surroundings, viewing the many spectra of light with his tri-oculars while attuning his microphones to the various frequencies of sound. He couldn’t find a reason for the birds’ peculiar behavior, and he certainly wasn’t making enough sound to disturb them. Strange.

It galled him, being unable to quantify yet another ambiguous factor in this not-so-certain environ. This had quickly become a trend in this hateful jungle, with its excess in sounds and smells and small animals and concealing flora and everything in general. Every second he was here he could feel more and more skeins of data wriggle out of his grasp, bleeding into the chaos of the outside world. The jungle was a hell where his mathematics had abandoned him, leaving him to stumble about like any other human being, blind and deaf. But as much as the Reckoner hated to admit it, human was what he was, and his confusion just pointed out the incompleteness of his theories. And this was why he had signed up for this job in the first place, to put his theories to the greatest possible test. He flipped his tri-oculars off his eyes, revealing his faceless spymask, and continued the methodical maintenance of his weapon.

The Reckoner did not, could not, abide uncertainty, and though he could only do so much to ensure the predictable patterns of data in the world around him, it was still well within his means to ensure the precise functions and processes of his own body and the exact calibrations of his weapon. Moisture and dirt could damage or impede the functions of the many sensory apparatuses mounted on his rifle’s modular rails; there were physical factors that could jar delicate barometric equipment, while overexposure to heat could lull thermal readings to err by a fraction of a degree, an inaccuracy that was unacceptable.

The Reckoner pulled out a nanofabric cloth from one of his pockets and wiped the lenses of his scopes clean. Then he pocketed the cloth, flipped his tri-oculars back over his spymask, and once more covered himself in the false foliage of his water-cooled ghillie suit.

He shouldered his rifle and carried on.



The second sniping position was at the other side of the ridge, and though it wasn’t the highest vantage point, it nonetheless provided for a decent firing angle. With the ferns and shrubs serving as concealment, Andre and Mateo could snipe with discretion without immediately giving away their position.

Andre was leading the way, his submachine gun up and ready while his binoculars hanged from the strap around his neck. Behind him was Mateo, stalking silently, sweeping with his shouldered sniper rifle. They took great care to secure their position and knew full well that aside from traversing from one position to another, snipers were most vulnerable when, paradoxically, they were sniping.

Andre wasn’t just the spotter, he was also the one who watched both their backs. Aside from his submachine gun, he brought along a remote-detonated claymore to protect their flank.

There was a click. Mateo screamed as he grabbed Andre and -

The landmine detonated, shoving Mateo back and sending Andre flying up several meters into the air before scattering parts of him throughout the forest.

Andre’s charred remains landed with a thud. Mateo, despite the shell shock and the disorientation from his bleeding eardrums, screamed as he staggered to grasp the body of his exploded comrade. Andre was dead, Mateo finally realized, as he began grasping around blindly for his weapon.

Mateo got up and slowly turned around to find Fidel Castro emerging the nearby bushes. Mateo let out an incoherent cry of rage and charged the Cuban assassin.



Fidel drew his CQC weapons but before he could fire off a shot, the sniper was on him. Faced with this, Fidel performed a simple takedown, locking the attacker’s arm with his gun and knife hands, and then spinning around and using the man’s own momentum against him, taking him down to the ground.

Fidel wasn’t expecting a shell shocked man bleeding from several shrapnel wounds to put up a fight, and he certainly wasn’t expecting the man to get right back up and go for more. But the man was undeterred and charged Fidel, forcing him to step backwards by just a few inches – nonetheless, the move surprised the sniper and put him off balance. He wasn’t the only one who was surprised though, when suddenly the back of his head exploded.

Despite being very dead, the former sniper took two more steps, and then fell into a very surprised Fidel Castro’s arms. “What the-?!”

With his face smeared in splattered blood and brains, Fidel had no time to think, no time to wait. He reacted instantaneously and released the standing corpse just as another part of it exploded, this time through the back, into the torso, and bursting out the chest in a bloody eruption of thoracic organs and ribcage.

Fidel was off long before the former sniper’s corpse hit the ground. He ran over the spotter’s exploded corpse and ran to the edge of the ridge. No hesitation, no thought, not a second’s consideration, Fidel leapt and felt death narrowly miss the back of his own skull.

He curled himself into a ball to minimize the damage, but there wasn’t enough time. After smashing through several hard branches, Fidel landed with a loud thud and rolled all the way downhill, hitting rocks and rolling over shrubs and bushes until, dozens of meters later, his all-terrain descent finally ended with him sprawled over the jungle floor.

Fidel gritted his teeth. It hurt like hell, but at least he was still alive and probably out of range.

“Bastard…” Fidel hissed as he checked his body for fractures. Luckily, nothing was broken, as far as he could tell.

It was a sniper. Where he came from, Fidel didn’t know. Probably found his location and intercepted after hearing the landmine explode. Fidel cursed himself, of course the blast would give away his position, and what he was doing so close by instead of distancing himself from it…

There were other more important questions though. Particularly, who would shoot his own comrades to take out a target? Fidel scowled, it was probably one of those freak mercenaries. The absence of audible gunfire… it was probably from a silenced sniper rifle of some kind, or another freak with invisible bullets. It was probably the former, Fidel concluded. Sniping with invisibullets from an invisible gun by saying ‘bang’ and ‘boom’ was highly unlikely unless they made scopes that could be screwed onto thumbs.

Fidel pulled something out of his back pocket - a Russian-made POMZ, a landmine on a wooden stake. He drove it into the ground, set it up with the tripwire, armed the fuse, and covered the thing with a handful of dead leaves.

If the sniper was going to come by and confirm his kill or look for tracks… he would be in for a surprise.

This wasn’t going to be just a battle of wits, he knew this was going to be a battle of stamina – a war of attrition. Fidel checked his camouflage index setting, got up and slowly moved out. AK-47 shouldered, Fidel was careful to place himself under the cover and concealment of trees, going low and crouching behind foliage, using them as concealment. Rain would’ve been good though, Fidel thought, would’ve minimized visibility. Nonetheless, with his Subsistence Suit blending more than adequately with the surroundings, Fidel made damn sure he wasn’t going to be easy to find.

Looking up, he saw the sun blazing high up in the sky, sending down a scorching heat that evaporated the jungle’s precious moisture. It was noon, perfect time for a shootout.

Fidel found an SVD – probably the dead sniper’s, probably got blown off the ridge by the blast. He picked it up and examined it. The only damaged part was the loosely dangling laser sight, which was useless and would’ve given away the user’s position anyway. The scope was a little off, but Fidel righted it with a few adjustments and rubbed its lens with his dirty thumb – a clean lens could reflect light, which was even worse than a laser sight.

Fidel unequipped his AK-47 and shouldered his SVD. He only had one mag, the one on the rifle, and that was only ten rounds. He had to make it count.



The execution of the strike was inherently flawed; the target had survived and was, most probably, relatively undamaged. But that fact was neither disturbing nor disappointing, in fact it was expected. Though the first shot was fired from an optimum position, the exact moment the shot was taken was far from opportune. It was a deliberate choice; the shot was taken at that struggling microsecond when factors were most unpredictable precisely to give the target a decent probability of survival. The first two rounds had cleanly overpenetrated the obstruction and could have killed the target then and there, but they didn’t, and in that instant, the target was already fleeing, and the third shot missed, plain and simple.

In layman’s terms, it was a warning shot.

Chance, that ultimate equalizer, was such a fascinating concept. It was one that came back to him again and again. How could a theory be tested without an uncontrolled variable? It could not, and that fact was the sole purpose of this exercise, this game, this experiment.

The world was not a closed system, neither was it a mechanically deterministic one. Below the deceptive veneer of design, order, and stability was an abyss of chaos and discord. Or, perhaps underneath all that entropic disharmony was an underlying mechanism with patterns that could eventually be deciphered and comprehended. Without sufficient knowledge, one could not be told from the other.

The Reckoner was on the move, shifting to another position. Even without foreknowledge of the area, he could calculate the vantage point provided by the slope’s hypotenuse, the angles of fire it could give him, what exactly could he see and not see when he was up there, subtracted by the cover and concealment trees could provide him and the other party.

The target would be on the move as well. From what he could extrapolate from pre-engagement observations, the target could run but knew better. The target, Fidel Castro, knew that his odds were greater when in the offense, and so he would not flee, he would fight back – to the death, if need be.

The Reckoner had spent his entire life making sense of the world around him. It was an almost impossible task at first; the utter inability to think in the qualitative necessitated the quantification of every physical factor perceivable to the senses. To function and survive required the development of a system of input and output, the processing of fields and variables, parameters, values and signals. That system would grow to become equations and those equations would become a theory of everything.

The main problem was that the Reckoner still had insufficient data. There were blanks in his theory of everything, unacceptably huge blanks that echoed in the recesses of his mutated brain. He could process information at speeds beyond the synaptic capacities of most humans, but that same speed made the crash-stop of his calculations against the vast walls of ignorance all the more painful. To him, there was simply no alternative.

The Reckoner would complete his theory, he would understand the world around him, and then he would be finally at peace.

To do that, he had to put his equation to the ultimate test, to successfully anticipate the most unpredictable thing in the world – the human mind.

Thus, he hunted the deadliest game of all.

Man.



Fidel went around the ridge. It was a slow and unnerving process, requiring him to methodically examine all the high points from afar. Before he could even think of venturing forth from cover, whether he was crouched behind the tree, lying under a bush or in a hollowed out tree trunk, he had to scan every conceivable sniping position and potential hiding spot with his SVD, his binoculars, or with his naked eyes. He’d search from left to right, down diagonally, and then from left to right again in a Z-shaped search pattern.

Low ground was a disadvantageous position. Fidel had no vantage point whatsoever, and the odds of seeing and shooting first were not in his favor. Nonetheless, low ground also minimized his target profile and until he got his bearings, he was going to keep his head low while establishing some distance between him and his attacker.

Halfway to circumnavigating the ridge, Fidel found himself before a grassy field – a clearing twice that of a football field. The only way to cross it was to crawl all the way through, head held low. To simply run across would be suicide. Fidel looked up, saw the blazing corona of the sun, panted, and wiped the evaporating sweat off his face. There was a rocky outcropping just before the field and Fidel took refuge under its shade.

Fidel pulled out a canteen and took a sip of water, and then his earpiece began to beep. After putting his canteen away, he flicked his radio on.

“Fidel,” said the distorted voice. “Are you near the rendezvous point?”

“No, not yet. I’m gonna be a little delayed,” Fidel explained. “I’m a little busy…”

“One of the Problem Solvers?” N inquired.

“Yeah…a sniper.”

“The Reckoner.”

“The what?”

“The Reckoner. A prodigious marksman, a sniper savant. Be extremely cautious in engaging him.”

“Does he have a spotter?” Fidel asked.

“No.”

“Then that makes things more even then…” Fidel thought aloud. Mano a mano, a real shootout at high noon.

“No. The Reckoner is a mathematical genius, a metahuman with superbright abilities. He can outthink you, predict your every move. He’ll be two steps ahead of you.”

Fidel thought this over before replying with something the Major once said to him: “You can’t predict everything in the battlefield.”

“If I were you, I would evade him and head for the rendezvous, a.s.a.p.”

“If I run, I’ll only die tired,” Fidel said, and that was a fact. He killed the transmission and changed to the Major’s frequency.



The Reckoner reached his second firing position on the foot of a forested hill. The field of fire available to him and the vegetation cover available to his target are all within his expectations. He hunkered down and propped his modified PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II against his legs, brushing nonexistent dirt off its light metal body and unusually thick barrel. He then removed the box magazine and carefully worked the bolt, ejecting the single 7.62mm sabot round from the chamber.

The chase was largely over, and now the Reckoner moved on to the next stage of his hunt. He expected that the target, Fidel Castro, had ceased his initial phase of panicked flight – a reaction to his opening shot that he had perfectly anticipated. An instinctive desire to put as much distance and obstacles between himself and his unknown assailant was the default reaction to such a situation, an automated reaction that military training only tempered. It was only now that the target would come to terms with the change in external factors surrounding him, and start to formulate a proper, tactical response. Now it would longer be a chase. It would be a game of spotting and stalking, of attrition and slow maneuvers.

The barrel of the Reckoner’s customized weapon was in reality designed to fire .50 caliber rounds. The larger bullets had the longer range that he preferred, but their recoil made firing the gun on the move dangerously inaccurate. Adequate enough for a short-ranged firefight, mayhaps, but the Reckoner demanded nothing less than absolute accuracy in his sniping work. Therefore, he preferred saboted 7.62mm rounds while on the move, but now that he had the chance, he will use his custom Hecate to its greatest potential. He snapped a magazine of .50 Whisper rounds in place, the silent bullets complementing the massive sound suppressor integrated into the rifle’s barrel. He was not about to give out his position so quickly yet.

With one hand, the Reckoner pulled the bolt back and pushed it forwards, feeling the first Whisper enter the chamber. It was a movement he had repeated hundreds of thousands of times, drilled himself to mechanical perfection. The familiar jar traveling up his arm was a reminder that deep as he was in this jungle of chaos; at least one part of the universe was perfectly fine.

He shouldered his rifle, looking down the sights, making sure that everything else was lined up properly. He shifted his prone slightly to find the optimal resting point of the stock, then adjusted the scope and more esoteric sensors with precise and minute twists of knobs. A gentle brush of the finger, like dew landing on a quivering spider’s web, activated the directional microphone.

The Reckoner scanned the area with his sensorium.

Heat signatures and nigh-inaudible gave his target away, and he settled himself accordingly. Between them was a grassy clearing, devoid of the trees and undergrowth that was a symptom of rainforests. Beyond that was rocky outcropping, and behind the rocks was Fidel Castro, stationary.

He was where the Reckoner predicted he would be, but the outcrop was not. The ideal scenario of a clear shot was always spoiled by messy reality. There was his target caught in a temporary moment of vulnerability; stationary, communicating on his radio – the Reckoner’s instruments detected the encrypted signals and the faint echoes of speech – and soon to slip away, to begin his counterattack. The Reckoner must seize the initiative and shoot him first. But how?

The Reckoner’s brain entered a higher gear, bringing out the true extent of his metahuman powers. Countless imaginary bullets raked every vector of the near-perfect model of reality inside his mind, translating the trajectories into directions of aim and muscle movements. He pictured the warm bundle of probabilistic blurs where his target should be, dropping it into his ballistic calculations and searching for the one shot that would intersect with its dense center. The most efficient solution coalesced, as the inside of his skull warmed slowly. The most efficient path between two points was a straight line.

The Reckoner didn’t kill people with guns. He killed them with mathematics.



“I only have a battered SVD with a bent sight and ten rounds,” Fidel reported.

The Major mulled this over before asking: “Weren’t you trained in countersniping?”

“I haven’t had much practice, Major. I was always better in CQC…”

“That you were. This Reckoner, he’s supposed to be some kind of ‘sniper savant’ who has no need for a spotter?”

“Yeah…that’s what N said. He’s supposed to be this superbright metahuman. I guess that beats invisible bullets…”

“Hrm, that means you probably don’t stand a chance in a conventional long-ranged shootout.”

“I know… he could’ve killed me then and there when I was grappling with that merc, but he didn’t. It’s like he’s playing with me, I don’t have any advantage whatsoever.”

“Fidel, try to think sideways. If this sniper savant is such a mathematical genius, then he’s probably not much of a creative type.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I’m trying to say is that you should use your imagination. If you can’t outthink him, then outwit him. Use guerilla warfare and unconventional tactics. If not, then try to outlast him. Your… condition allows you to last much longer out there in the field than any ordinary man. If you can tire him out, wait for him to slip up and make a mistake -”

“Major?”

The voice that replied to him was not the Major’s. It was an inhuman one, cold and unsympathetic, devoid of emotions yet seemingly satisfied. It said one thing:

“You’re dead.”


It came without warning, as silent as a whisper, the .50 high penetration bullet punching a clean hole right through the outcropping in an explosion of dirt and rock before it went through flesh and muscle.

Blood stained stone, splattered, dripped down onto the dirt to form tiny pools, some of the droplets even got on the grass.

One more inch would’ve decapitated him. The round had missed, or nearly missed, or grazed him at that delicate point where the side of the neck went down to join the shoulder.

Fidel slumped to the side as blood dribbled down his side, under his suit. A sticky feeling of warmth sliding down. The sudden rapidness, the totally unexpected vector of attack, he didn’t even have time to feel the pain. Dilated eyes narrowed into a renewed focus, that animalistic instinct to survive.



The round from his rifle drilled through the rock at head height and the Reckoner saw through his scope pixels of red among the explosion of gravel. A confirmed hit, and for an instant, he thought he saw a slumping figure slide across the tiny gap that the ruined rock afforded his field of vision. A kill, his instincts screamed. A headshot through the rock, just as planned -

Insufficient data.

Quickly, the Reckoner replaced the Whispers with his 7.62mm magazine, suppressing his anxiety for his usual precision. A quick look through the scope showed that his target was still slumped behind the rock. The subsonic speed of a .50 Whisper round, as well as the momentum the bullet expended to punch through the rock, meant that only a solid hit could guarantee death. He had to go and confirm his kill. The lives and deaths of several untested formulae relied on the result.

Raising his rifle again, the Reckoner got up and started to stalk across the grassy field, a straight approach that kept the outcrop between himself and the target. He hunched low to let his ghillie suit blend into the tall grass, taking care to make as little noise as possible. Gun first, he slowly approached the target's position.



Fidel was still, not a breath escaped his lips or nostrils. He could not see his attacker, if he moved to look out, or if he moved at all, he would be dead.

Silence. The quiet of the approaching end.

That deafening stillness was broken by the sound of rustling grass. The noise of an approaching reckoning.

Fidel moved.



Sudden motion. A round little object came over the rock towards him – the distinct shape of a fragmentation grenade, sailing slowly end-to-end. The Reckoner’s mind screamed into action, calculating the trajectory of the explosive and raising his rifle before another part of him could even acknowledge the surprise of his target’s survival. No time to peer through the scope, no time to brace and aim, just a precisely calculated shot born from pure predictive cognition. The grenade was tumbling as he thought, the bullet leaving the barrel before it had even stopped rising, the perfect converging lines in his mind –

The 7.62mm round detonated the fragmentation grenade in midair, exploding too far away from the Reckoner to do him any harm. Metal shrapnel spiraled into the trees and the grass, flocks of birds taking flight in alarm. Then the Reckoner realized that the first grenade was just a decoy. A second, smoother grenade on its own trajectory raced his receding tunnel vision, vanishing into the grass under his swerving rifle and replacing his field of vision with white light.

A flashbang grenade? No, the noise and the heat was wrong. It was a white phosphorus grenade, and its explosion had overwhelmed the infrared sensors in his tri-oculars. Temporarily blinded, the Reckoner deduced quickly that he was not in immediate threat. The WP had set the field of dry grass on fire – not on top of him, luckily – and in any case his water-cooled ghillie suit should protect him for a while. Blinking, one hand reached up to disable his infrared vision. He ducked even lower and slowly backpedaled until his vision returned, betting that his target would be using this opportunity to escape and not gun for him, relying on his disguise to keep him concealed before he recovered.

The world resolved back into a vision of smoke and fire, rendering both vision and IR detection useless.



Fidel ran low and fast, using the fire and the smoke as concealment to change his position and elude the aim of his assailant. In the battlefield, the still were the dead. Red flame and black smoke, the snapping sounds of dried foliage becoming tinder to be consumed by fire, the noise of screeching birds, everything obscured everything.

Fidel knew that the man on the other side, the Reckoner, would be doing everything he could in his considerable arsenal of abilities to reacquire him in his sights. Fidel wiped the blood off the gash on his collar, a mark of how, just seconds ago, he was merely an inch away from death. The fire was spreading, ambiguous winds fueling the flames and spreading them outwards. Would the Reckoner assume he was hiding behind the fire, following it as it crept towards wherever the wind took it? Would the flame’s thermal bloom be enough to mask his body heat? Was the Reckoner even alive, or had the flames consumed him? Wishful thinking, Fidel discarded the thought as he crouched down and pulled off his bandana, wrapping it around his bloodied neck – like a scarf or a noose.

Whoever or whatever the Reckoner was, Fidel had to assume that the man would not relent - ever. Fidel himself would never abandon his mission; he was dedicated to his cause, loyal to the end. That drive was the one thing that kept him going, and if the Reckoner also had that single-minded tenacity… then he would never stop. Not until one of them was dead.

Fidel had a mission. He would not die here.

There, something flashed – the shine of an immaculate lens glistening in the harsh sunlight. Fidel shouldered his SVD, breathed in, breathed out, and aimed.

The birds, small and elusive slender billed snipes, fell silent. Only the sound of snapping foliage and grass consumed by the flame could be heard.

The crack of gunfire echoed.

The snipes took to the air.



The Reckoner felt the bullet pass between the ragged folds of his ghillie suit, tearing off strands of mock foliage. He flinched and ducked instinctively, droplets of water from ruptured cooling capillaries bleeding from his disguise as he avoided statistically probable trajectories of fire. Somehow, his target had not only survived, but was now mounting an effective counterattack. The sheer improbability of this made his mind reel, his inner model of the world cracking and crumbling away into chaos and inexplicability. In which stage of his calculations did it all go wrong? Did he underestimate the density of South American rock? Did he underestimate his target’s aggression? Was there some factor present that he hadn’t even considered?

Speculation would have to wait, as the Reckoner now had a firefight on his hands. Fidel Castro’s shot had hit his profile but missed his body, the ghillie suit at least performing this service. It was either a miss due to a profile mess-up or due to visual distortion from the heat-haze of the bush fire, but the Reckoner would be foolish to rely on it happening a second time. Smoothly he recalled the sensation of the brushing bullet, triangulated it to the crack of his opponent’s rifle, swerved, and then - between a breath and a heartbeat - fired.



Fidel was already on the move when the 7.62mm dart silently tore a line of dried grass to shreds, the snap of ripping stalks and stems being the only evidence of return fire Fidel could discern. He cursed, he swore he saw the shot hit, saw the Reckoner go down. How he was still alive… the man was certainly tenacious, deadly accurate too. Within seconds of going down, he was already returning fire, putting bullets too close for Fidel’s comfort.

Fidel moved, kept his head low as another shot ripped grass and blasted dirt of a frightening proximity to him. Yet the rounds were utterly silent, no crack of gunfire, no muzzle flash – Fidel couldn’t trace them. He had no time to aim, the Reckoner was well camouflaged, and returning fire blindly would only allow the sniper savant to further triangulate his position.

Holding his SVD by the stock on one hand, he pulled out a grenade and bit off its pin – painfully chipping his front teeth as he did so.

A hard gust came out of nowhere, blowing through the field and swaying the grass, driving smoke and flame downwind towards from them. The fire was far away though, so was the smoke. The wind was bad, it was against Fidel’s heading, but he had no choice.

He released the grenade’s safety lever and threw it low and hard.

The grenade detonated, but it did not explode, instead it rolled towards the edge of the field and unleashed a thick trail of acrid smoke – CS gas. The wind was against the smoke’s advance and instead blew the caustic clouds back to the field – forming a columnar pathway of blinding gas.

Fidel did not breathe, he shielded his face with a hand, and without any hesitation whatsoever, he ran into the trail of smoke.


[To Be Continued]

[Shroom Man 777]

[IMMEDIATELY]



The Reckoner was downwind as well and as the teargas encroached upon the field, he fell back to avoid it – and to recollect and organize the torrents of new and conflicting data he had just received. Despite being unaffected by the gas, a part of him was nonetheless disoriented. The target’s survival, despite that perfect shot through the outcropping, it was improbable – no, it was chance. And how did Fidel Castro know where he was? The Reckoner knew his ghillie suit provided him a camouflage ratio of 90%. The fact that he had failed to observe and fire upon his target first told him of Fidel Castro’s dangerous ingenuity with his limited resources. Somehow, the target must have had a camouflage ratio exceeding the Reckoner’s own – 95%!

This was a dangerous situation; the Reckoner had to be careful. Extrapolation and estimation was becoming increasingly dangerous. He looked at the hole in his ghillie suit, where that round had just narrowly missed him, and then he knew that there were more things than his theory’s completion at stake – he was gambling his own life too. What caused that round to miss, how it tore through ghillie’s false foliage and missed instead of penetrating his skinsuit’s ballistic fiber and tumbling through his internal organs to end his life… it was chance.

The Reckoner could not abide by uncertainties, by factors beyond his control. Yet it was because of those same uncertainties that he was still alive… it vexed him, perplexed him, fascinated him and frightened him.

The abstract and unquantifiable had no place in the battlef- the experiment, the Reckoner reminded himself. He simply needed to get a better grip on the situation.

Surrounded by a ring of dying fire, wind lifting the embers into the air, with each footstep crushing dead and ashen plant life, the Reckoner strode to the rocky outcropping and saw the fist-sized hole. He walked around it, and there on that undamaged patch of soil were little pools of dried blood. Not enough blood for a significant injury.

With slight concern, the Reckoner briefly examined his rifle – perhaps his target’s constant elusion was due to some fault in equipment. He recalibrated the thermal sensors mounted atop the scope and in that instant saw in that immaculate lens a reflection of the sun as it was beginning to be eclipsed by the dark clouds of rain.

Carefully, the Reckoner removed his tri-oculars from its head-mount, and then his spymask from his face. A thin stream of blood was trickling down one nostril, the side effect of temporarily overclocking his brain. Crimson droplets fell off his lip, one by one, and landed on the dirt, on the blood of wounded prey.

With two fingers, the Reckoner scooped a minute amount of the sticky crimson fluid. Ever so lightly, he placed his bloody fingertips softly on the clean lens and wiped a thin and delicate film of blood onto it, calculated to reduce reflectivity without sacrificing transparency, thus minimally affecting target acquisition.

The Reckoner wiped the rest of the blood from his face, replaced his spymask and tri-oculars, and then set about the process of reacquiring his target.



Fidel stabbed the ration can with his CQC knife, punching two tiny holes through its lid. Then he bent his head backwards and poured the contents onto his stinging bloodshot eyes, spilling cow’s milk all over his face. It was a quick fix, milk couldn’t stop the breathing difficulties caused by tear gas, but Fidel made sure none of the irritants got into his lungs anyway. Fidel licked his milk-soaked moustache and drank what little was left in the can. Sometimes, survival viewing necessitated improvisation.

The SVD had nine rounds left.

Fidel had the initiative; he held the high ground, having escaped the Reckoner by literally running for the hills. With the advantageous position, he would be the one to dictate the terms of the battle. But Fidel was sure that the Reckoner knew this as well, having already anticipated him, found him, and nearly killed him in two separate occasions. The prodigious marksman was a tenacious, cold and calculating assailant.

To win, Fidel had to defeat the sniper savant’s calculations. He had to do something unexpected.

Equipping his binoculars, Fidel surveyed the top of the hill for optimum sniping positions. He would not choose the ones that gave him the best vantage points, for those spots would surely be the first to be scrutinized by the Reckoner’s scope.

Fidel began planting his remaining mines, claymores and frags as he went towards his chosen vantage point, carefully setting them up along the way. And even after his ordnance was expended, Fidel didn’t stop and continued stringing tripwires on the trees. The terrain was irregular, with the sharp inclines, muddy ground and rocks obstructing most possible approaches, there were only so many ways to the top. Hopefully, he’d give the Reckoner a hard time with that.

Fidel continued his trek uphill and, when he was far enough from his makeshift minefield, he pulled out the flare gun he salvaged from the plane wreck.

A rumbling filled the air, the sound of distant thunder that heralded the coming rain. Heavy droplets fell from the sky and the downpour began.



Aside from the nosebleeds, the consequences of running on overclock was a temporarily heightened metabolism, significantly increasing his body's energy requirements. Thus within the Reckoner’s flexsuit - which was what he wore under the false foliage of his ghillie – was a bladder filled with liquid nutrients. The bladder was connected to a straw that ran under his spymask, up to the side of his mouth. With a simple movement of the lips, he pulled the straw into his mouth, bit onto it, and began drinking in the mixture of water, glucose, electrolytes, proteins, and other forms of liquid fuel for his brain.

A sudden hissing sound interrupted his drink, and instinctively he crouched down behind a rock for cover while simultaneously assessing the situation. The prolonged hiss did not sound like the discharge of any firearm he knew of, so he dared to peek and saw an orange-red projectile rocketing upwards to the sky. The Reckoner immediately knew what it was, a signal flare, and knew what caused it. Quickly, he triangulated the airborne pyrotechnic’s point of origin before it fizzled in the rain.

Fidel Castro, the target, was deliberately luring him into a trap. That was not a conjecture, that was a fact. It was an ambush, and given the time since their last engagement, Fidel would have no doubt laid traps along the most direct route – improvising landmines out of his remaining supply of grenades, extrapolating from his creative use of them in the previous engagement.

Nonetheless, the basic flaw in Castro's ambush was it gave away his general position, saving the Reckoner the time and energy of having to scour the hills and plains for his trail. He knew his supplies were limited, every use of his hyper-cognition costing him too much stamina to recover during the course of the hunt. The longer he languished in the jungle, the more the odds were stacked against his target.

Granted, springing Fidel's trap had its own risks. But for now the numbers were still on the Reckoner's side.



Thunder and lightning. There was a flash and then an explosion in the sky, causing many tree apes to scream in fear. The sound of heavy rainfall hitting the trees, rocks and ground, it was as if the very sky itself was being thrown down. Another flash of lightning, a long pause, and then the rumble of thunder. Then another flash, but there was barely a pause preceding the deafening blast, as a tree atop the hill was felled – laid low as its highest branches were blown apart.

Fidel ignored it all. Water flowed down his mud-smeared face, which was pressed against the wooden stock of his SVD, one sharp eye absolutely focused on that lens. He was watching and waiting. The Reckoner would never trip his mines, he would go through the few un-mined paths, and those paths were under the gaze of Fidel’s scope.

He was not certain whether this plan would work. He hoped it would, hoped the Reckoner would anticipate the trap, but not the trap within the trap.

It was mid afternoon, but the clouds made it as dark as the night. And with the rain…Fidel could barely see anything even with his scope.

Fidel pressed himself tighter against the thick tree trunk. It provided him neither cover nor concealment in any form against the Reckoner, but he hoped to hell that –

There was a distant explosion, at first Fidel thought it was more thunder but the rising column of smoke told him that it was not. It was one of his mines, a grenade perhaps, or a claymore. Had the Reckoner blundered into one of his traps? No…

Another detonation echoed throughout the rain-ridden jungle.

Fidel swerved his rifle, magnified the scope…focused on the location of the blast, tried to acquire a target... No, the Reckoner wasn’t tripping the mines. He was shooting them.

Again, there was another explosion – this one much closer, close enough for him to tell that it was a claymore.

Was the Reckoner announcing his approach?

The next explosion was a more distant one but it was louder, two frag grenades stringed together, Fidel knew he planted it before the claymore that had blown previously…

With no idea where the Reckoner was coming from, and certain he wasn’t using the predicted routes, Fidel had no choice but to turn on his motion-detector – and throw it as far away as he could.



At the end of the haphazard minefield was a clever ruse. The Reckoner examined it, but didn’t risk touching it or going anywhere near it. There, tied to a forking tree branch, was an AK-47. A halved binocular was tied to its top to make it look like a scope, and under the barrel was a damaged laser sight – it was still working, projecting a beam that showed itself in the rain. From afar, the contraption would have passed as a Dragunov for an untrained observer, the genuine item which would still be in the capable hands of his target. If he was down there, he would’ve moved in precaution to avoid the laser and blunder into Fidel’s view or, if he was caught by surprise under the beam, reflexively shoot down the decoy – and thus alerting Castro of his presence.

The Reckoner knew the minefield was a distraction, to force him into a route that would be under the scrutiny of Castro’s scope.

So the Reckoner did what was elementary and turned the minefield into his own distraction. Detonating the mines from afar would misdirect Castro’s attention, and that would allow the Reckoner to make his way uphill unnoticed.

Even with his infrared scopes and directional microphone obscured by the rain and the wretched animals populating the jungle, he had a view of the trap that Fidel had laid out. Now it was just a simple matter of calculating where he was lying and waiting. The layout of the mines and claymores, the exact positioning of the laser…it narrowed down the possibilities.

But Fidel would’ve surely known by now that his trap had been compromised, and he would be on the move. Coupled with the fact that he had no idea where his assailant was, with the rain making visual contact difficult…

If the Reckoner had any true understanding of human emotion whatsoever, he would’ve smiled. The passive sharkskin sensors distributed throughout his flexsuit alerted him of a sonic-electronic signal it had detected along its peripheral range. From what he could ascertain, it was the distinct signature of a motion-detector.

He aimed his weapon towards where his sensors told him the signal would be and…found nothing. At first he thought that the jungle had finally taken its toll on his delicate instruments – all the physical shock, the humidity, the moisture...

Then, after he decided to magnify his scope to its highest possible resolution, he saw it. A compact motion-detector small enough to be carried in one hand.

Cleverly, Castro knew he would detect the motion-detector’s signal, so like all of his other decoys and distractions, he left it there…or threw it there.

The Reckoner began triangulating possible trajectories and angles, correlating them with probable points of origin, and then eliminated those that did not correspond with locations that provided good sniping positions relative to the landmines, the decoy laser sighted Kalashnikov, and the routes required to circumvent those distractions. In his mind the whole hill hovered and split into zones, every imaginary point of view scrutinized, each square meter labeled and false-colored, every feature and contour contextualized and databased...

As his brain worked on overclock, the Reckoner’s normally unimaginative and purely mathematical brain came up with an idea – it wasn’t a creative or original idea, but an idea nonetheless…



Fidel knew that the Reckoner had easily seen through his trap, and thus he created a new one out of the old one. In the battlefield, one had to adapt and evolve in order to survive – and flexibility necessitated the modification of resources and the expansion of plans.

Besides, if it worked on the Slinger (albeit unintentionally) then why not the Reckoner? It wasn’t as if John Doe could’ve told him about it…

He had thrown the motion detector long and far. The Reckoner would have to move in to get close enough to find out what it was, and Fidel would be waiting when he did. By then it would be too late.

But Fidel wouldn’t be waiting in the same place, though. Slowly, almost snakelike, he slithered down the slope behind his original position – once more using the dead leaves of the jungle floor, now further lubricated by mud and rainwater, to slide downwards without a sound.



The rain stopped. Slowly it withered down, turning into a pathetic drizzling precipitation before finally giving way to clear skies. It did not take long for the blazing sun to cause leftover rainwater to evaporate into a fine fog-like mist of humidity.



The Reckoner was lying prone and still. He clutched his weapon tightly, almost apprehensively. He was acutely aware of the degraded performance of his body, his quiscient muscles revealing a map of the toll of the hunt. This was a dangerous tactic; the numbers that were usually so clear to him were ambiguous now, lost like everything in the rain-shrouded jungle. But this was so close to the moment that his experiment would yield its results, and now he couldn't stop himself from taking shortcuts. Carefully, he monitored his camouflage ratio. He knew his target would come soon...and when that happened…



Fidel was crawling on his belly when he saw that all too familiar flash of an immaculate lens gleaming in the harsh sunlight. Slowly, Fidel placed his cheek against the smooth wooden stock of his SVD, placed his eye behind the scope’s lens, modulated his breathing as he lined it all up.

“Gotcha this time.”

A shot rang out and echoed throughout the silent emptiness of the jungle.

Followed by another.

And another.

Six rounds left.



This time, Fidel would make sure. Silently he made his way around his target, watching the unmoving body carefully, rifle shouldered and trigger finger ready for any sign of life. Should that freak mercenary somehow get back up…

He opted for an indirect path, and as he made his way closer, he lowered his rifle. Lying there was the Reckoner, in a prone position, surveying the vantage point with his rifle by his side. A fitting end.

But Fidel had to make sure.

He pulled the ghillie suit off to reveal a clump of moss and rocks shouldering the advanced heavily customized sniper rifle.

It was a trap!

Fidel spun around and raised his SVD.

Six rounds left.



The Reckoner emerged from the bushes behind Fidel and, in one motion rehearsed endlessly in his mind, drew his FN-Five SeveN handgun like lightning. He lined it up with deadly precision and fired one shot, aimed at the man’s heart.

The armor-piercing round tore through steel and wood and glass, obliterating the SVD and its scope, then it tore through fabric weaving, through the tactical webbing, and then…



Fidel screamed in wordless pain as the flashbang grenade in his breast pocket detonated and submerged him in a world of pain, blinding him, deafening him, and scorching his face and chest with an unimaginable heat. The blast ripped the webbing off him and threw him off the ledge.

He landed. No rounds left. He lost the gun.

Blind and deaf, Fidel could nonetheless smell something burning…burning on him. No time to think or react, he just ran – bolted as fast as his legs could possibly take him, ignoring the leaves and branches slashing across his scalded face, not caring if he’d run straight into a tree or trip or fall down. Staggered once or twice, tried to right himself by spreading his arms as the blast that deafened him also scrambled the balance centers of his inner ears…

He could hear something. His own breathing. His own beating heart.

Flowing water.



As the Reckoner ran forward, he emptied his pistol’s twenty-round magazine, ejected the clip, loaded a new one, holstered the sidearm, and, in another single smooth motion, picked up his Ultima Ratio Hecate II sniper rifle by its sling, shouldered it, and began aiming.

His tri-oculars had adjusted for the unexpected detonation of that flashbang. No time to see how that factored into his theory. No, it was time to solve the equation that was Fidel Castro once and for all.

Infrared sensors turned the muddy greens of the jungle into a world of cool blues and blacks, warm red, yellows, and hot whites. The world of heat and thermal radiation. As his scopes zoomed in on the glowing figure that was staggering about, blind yet surprising agile, his microphones began amplifying sounds – heartbeats, pants and gasps, breaking branches…

From his oculars, three lasers beamed out and homed in on the target, and though the beams themselves were within the truly invisible infrared spectrum, the Reckoner could see them vectoring into a blood-red triangular targeting reticule.

Moving target or not, it locked on.

“QED,” the Reckoner whispered under his breath. Between his heartbeats, he fired the shot .



As he ran, his vision began returning to him. Just in time, he saw a tree and narrowly avoided it, dodging it with a staggering sidestep.

The steel-cored 7.62mm dart tore straight through the wood and bark. Fidel screamed as he felt it dig into the side of his back, where his kidney should be, before overpenetrating in a spurt of blood.

He collapsed, fell, but not on flat ground. He landed on a muddy slope and began sliding down with frightening speed, leaving behind a trail of blood.

Twigs and leaves and branches and roots whipped against his face and when they finally all cleared off -

“Oh shit!”

He fell off the cliff’s edge and fell screaming head first into the river.



His arms trembling, the Reckoner lowered the rifle. An abdomen hit, clean penetration, his target falling out of view before he could clear a second shot. Once again, chance had won the day. The hunt wasn't over yet.

The adrenaline started to drain from the Reckoner's system, and a blanket of fatigue was descending on his body. The pristine calculations in his mind were becoming slippery, slowly melting out of his grasp. Under his spymask, his face made a pained twitch as he willed himself to concentrate, and his lips reached automatically for the straw.

At least, he thought as his protesting legs lowered him down the bloody slope, he had finally managed to significantly injure his target. He peered down the cliff edge and looked along the raging river, trying to pick out traces of red. Currents could only carry the dead and wounded in one direction.



Fidel erupted out of the water, gasping and choking as he reached out for something to hold onto. He grabbed onto a tree root and pulled himself up a riverbank. Afterwards, he laid facedown on the mud and, having nearly drowned, coughed out copious amounts of water.

After a minute of labored breathing, Fidel turned himself over and calmly surveyed his surroundings.

The current had brought him further downstream, dragging him down until the waters were calm, and only then did it allow him to drift towards the riverbank in peace. Somehow, the place seemed familiar…

Directly overhead was a flock of birds, a family of brightly colored parrots flying to the other side of the river. As Fidel propped himself up against a tree, he noticed a pack of giant otters playing in the water as a caiman watched on silently – like a crocodilian log with teeth. The afternoon sun glistened on the water’s surface - no longer was it at its midday peak, but nonetheless it surveyed all those below it from an oblique angle.

Fidel dragged himself further up until he escaped the mud and finally reached truly dry land.

Fidel unbuttoned and unzipped the top of his Subsistence Suit and threw it aside, then he pulled a mirror out of his back pocket and began examining the clean hole on his backside. The round had entered in at an angle that missed spine by inches, its path brought it beneath the ribcage and into where his kidney was. Then it exited out of his lateral side, making a very clean exit wound. There wasn’t any significant bleeding, it didn’t hit any internal organs.

Ten years ago, Fidel was among the thousands of Cuban soldiers shipped out to Angola to fight against the American-supported UNITA forces. There in the dark continent’s forsaken forests, Cuban reconnaissance units did battle against South African special forces. In one of the many ensuing battles, Fidel was critically wounded and medivaced to a nearby field hospital. A piece of shrapnel had torn through his internal organs, and while they were able to save his guts, one of his kidneys had to go.

None of the river water made it into the wound since the inside of the Subsistence Suit was more than just skintight - in order to absorb bioenergy it had to serve as a second skin, sort of like a drysuit, but different.

It was just a simple matter of disinfecting and suturing the wound and then bandaging it all up. In no time, it was over.

The Reckoner was still out there. Fidel knew he was at his weakest and most vulnerable, lying there on the riverbank. He had to find some form of cover or concealment… there, not too far away, was a burrow dug out by the giant river otters. It was large enough for him to crawl in, and so he dragged himself inside and rested in the shade.

It didn’t take him long to notice that he wasn’t alone. Deeper in the burrow, a group of otter pups looked at him curiously. The animals in this part of the jungle had probably never seen a human before…

Fidel grinned as a thought intruded his mind. “Hrm…”

Before he could complete the thought though, a beeping filled the recesses his ear canal. He flicked on his radio.

“This is N.”

“What is it?”

“Have you avoided the Reckoner?”

“Sort of… not really. But yeah.”

“Then do not delay any further. Meet me at the rendezvous point, the coordinates -”

“No,” Fidel said, shaking his head.

“What?”

“I said no,” Fidel repeated himself. “I’m not going to your rendezvous point or your coordinates. You are going to meet up with me at these coordinates I’m going to give you.”

There was a pause, no amount of artificial vocal modulation could hide the apparent surprise. And then: “What is your position?”

“I’m near a river…I got washed downstream,” Fidel said as he pulled out his map and compass, estimated his general location, and gave N a set of coordinates with a distance agreeable to the both of them. “Got it?”

“Affirmative. Don’t be late.”

“Right,” Fidel muttered as he killed the transmission. Before he could do anything though, another incoming call came in, announcing itself with more beeping. Fidel had no choice but to flick it on. “Major Muerte…”

“Fidel, what happened? Did you beat that sniper? For a while there I thought…”

“I thought so too, Major.”

“But you overcame him and persevered. Good job, now…”

“Actually, I didn’t. I got shot and fell into a river…then I nearly drowned, but I managed to drag myself ashore. Now I’m hiding…in a hole. I’m okay though, thanks for asking.”

“Hiding...hm…” this was the part when the Major was about to dispense useful advice. “In the Vietnam War, I had to deal with snipers. Once, there was a sniper a hill with a heavy machinegun set on semiautomatic, I only had a bayonet with me as I went through the jungle to fall back. See, despite Russian orders, the Chinese had unleashed this bioweapon…it resulted in the Cong of the Dead incident. So…to avoid the sniper and make my escape, I had to pretend to be a walking corpse. It wasn’t that hard really, the jungle was full of them. All I had to do was fool the sniper and…”

“Thanks for the advice Major,” Fidel replied as he rested his head on a rock beside one of the otter pups. “ But I think I’m going to take a short nap…” and with that, he killed his radio.



Twilight descended, forcing the Reckoner to rely on the limited infrared and grainy night vision functions of his tri-oculars. He had been following the course of the river his target fell into over the irregular terrain of the jungle, clambering amidst vegetation and disturbing clouds of gnats. He had taken short rests between periods of intense tracking to conserve energy, as the hunt had long since exceeded the original parameters of his estimations. The baking heat was slowly abating with the fall of the sun, and that slowed the erosion of his stamina. But night’s low visibility posed a different set of problems he had to solve. This had to end quickly.

However, geographical analysis suggested that he might be nearing his quarry. The terrain was flattening out, the steep and rocky banks of the river giving way to more accessible boundaries of ferns and mud. If he could only start to get close to the water this far downriver, his target would only have the chance to drag himself out around here. The Reckoner paused slightly to check his rifle again – quickly and by touch alone. Everything correctly calibrated, he walked down the bank and started to scour for footprints, blood, any signs of human presence. The chirp of crickets almost drowned out the sound of the gentle current, and for once the Reckoner saw something long and scaly break the surface, the unmistakable sign of a crocodile. With his target already bleeding and suffering internal injuries, he wondered if Fidel Castro was alive at all, or was the only thing left of him a chewed corpse at the bottom of the river.

Under the darkening sky the Reckoner walked, each step bringing him deeper into this increasingly senseless enterprise. It couldn’t really be called regret, because that would imply some sort of alternative. It was not choice that brought the Reckoner into this, but the same unbreakable chain of causal factors that led him through his life, one stepping-stone after another revealing themselves to him out of the murk of the world, so hard to find yet so clear when looking back. There had been torturous paths and there had been dead ends, but there was nothing that was wrong, nothing that could be blamed. And just as he reduced chaos into order wherever he went, he was destined to tread in this heart of darkness and transcend it.

In the dimness the Reckoner saw another ridged shape ahead. He stopped and trained his rifle on it. Another crocodile, but what was it doing outside the water at night? Then he saw the object sprawling next to it, mud-splattered but recognizable. An unmistakable sign of his target, Fidel Castro’s camouflage suit. The crocodile’s head was buried under it, and both shapes were still. Was this it, then? Was the chaotic wilderness on his side for once?

The Reckoner walked closer. There was blood too, on the bank and on the garment. The crocodile showed no sign of noticing his approach, but he knew that crocodiles could stay still for days if they had to, waiting for the right moment to strike at its prey. But if the crocodile had just had its fill of the Cuban commando, it could have little appetite left for him. Nevertheless, the Reckoner formulated several anti-crocodile contingencies in his head just in case.

Soon he was close enough to not only see the ripped garment clearly, but also the absence of any body within. The Reckoner knew that Fidel Castro’s encounter with this beast must result in the death of at least one subject, but its potential outcome laid before him like a Gordian knot, so plainly in sight yet so incomprehensible. He mentally cursed the poor visibility around him, but the prospect of a loose end irked him more. The final result of this long experiment, the validity of his field theories, the very affirmation of his inner order was at stake in this very moment. What choice did he have, other than to carry this to its conclusion?

With the end of his barrel, he lifted the garment. The crocodile’s head was missing.

An intake of breath, a sharp gasp of surprise, then behind him, a massive crash of water.

A terrible shape pounced from the river, unleashing an animalistic, primordial roar through its massive jaws. It was another crocodile – no, standing up, it was a dinosaur – no, it was some chimerical manifestation of the wild, rising to repel humanity’s transgression into its darkest heart-

Waves of total confusion crashed through the Reckoner’s mind, submerging his consciousness in screaming darkness. The overloading sensory input dragged down his image processing, violating parameters and shattering attempts at quantification, the cognitive feedback ripping into his utterly rationalized reflexes…leaving him a human being. No, ignorant, panicked…something less. Only a tiny core of discipline remained, telling his body to turn around and raise his rifle as his mind watched in existential limbo.



Fidel roared as loud as he could as he stormed out of the water, half-naked, with bloodsucking leeches wriggling all over his bare chest, and with river reeds stringing a decapitated caiman head snugly on top of his own head. He screamed, at once a cry that was at once both inhuman and animalistic in fury, a cry that came out of both his mouth and the gaping toothed maw of his reptilian disguise. Then and there, as he exploded out of the uncomfortably cold river water, did he cast away that emasculating veneer of civilitude, becoming one with the jungle’s primordial savagery and embracing his evolutionary birthright.

He unsheathed his fighting blade and drew forth his pistol, water dripping out of its barrel for it no longer had its silencer.

Before his hunter could bring his weapon to bear, Fidel let out an unsilenced shot – echoing throughout the dying daylight, slamming into the Reckoner’s flexsuited torso. Two more shots, sending the Reckoner staggering and twitching backwards.

The reeling Reckoner nonetheless fired his misaligned weapon, yet the round narrowly missed Fidel’s head. Instead, it blew a hole through his crocodile cap, splattering reptilian brains all over trees and leaves, and sending it flying off Fidel’s head.

Fidel was on him.

The first move disarmed the Reckoner, ripping the sniper rifle off his hands in a violent motion. Then Fidel slammed the butt of the gun against the Reckoner’s chin, and something broke audibly.

The Reckoner instinctively drew his sidearm but Fidel robbed the marksman of his other weapon too, a swift and efficient movement involving the forceful working-back of its slide and ejecting of its magazine. Then Fidel landed the final blow, stabbing him in his heart.

Fidel was disappointed when the blade glanced off the flexsuit’s protective weave, and the Reckoner took the opportunity to make his frenzied counterattack, muffled screaming coming from beneath his spymask as he shoved the both of them to the ground. As they went down, Fidel went for another stab, this one ruthlessly aimed at the throat, but in their imbalanced rolling, Fidel ended up imbedding his blade into a tree-root instead.

Then it devolved into the two of them struggling over Fidel’s .45, with the Reckoner on top, insanely trying to pry the weapon off his fingers… Fidel could hear him hyperventilate underneath his spymask.

If he wanted the gun so badly, then he could have it. Fidel let go, and as the Reckoner tried to aim it at Fidel’s head, going for one final close-up headshot, Fidel grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it, sending them rolling around once more. The gun fell away into the mud.

There was no longer any math or order in this battle, it had degenerated into a mud-smeared brawl dictated by chance alone.

Fidel slammed his fist into the Reckoner’s faceless face, and then he grabbed the man’s concealed visage and ripped the tri-oculars and spymask off his face.

There, underneath that dehumanizing disguise was the face of a young man barely out of his twenties. Copious amounts of blood flowed out of his nostrils and his eyes had the glaze of madness in them.

The Reckoner pulled Fidel’s CQC knife off the ground and charged him, bringing the blade down in an overhead stab.

Fidel blocked it, grabbed the attacking arm, twisted it and drove the Reckoner down into an armlock. The Reckoner kept on fighting, trying to slip out of Fidel’s hold, spitting out blood and saliva furiously. Fidel released his armlock. And began strangling him.



The first thing the Reckoner’s mind noticed as it rose out of the darkness was dizziness, indicating a lack of oxygen to his brain; several spots of intense pain on his body, probably caused by bullet hits, and the immobility of his body, due to being physically restrained by someone.

“What?” he blurted, but the word only reached as far as his throat. This was caused by the stranglehold around his neck impeding his movement and oxygen supply, and most certainly causing the dizziness as well. He was not exactly aware of what had happened during the last few seconds, due to something happening so far outside his expectations that his overly rational mind went into shock. But now his mind was back in functioning shape, it was obviously that he was on the losing side of a melee engagement.

He tried to piece together what happened during the blank, the brief lost moment when surprise had evolved into total defeat. He gathered the memory fragments of those last few seconds, the headless crocodile, the ripped suit – yes, it was inconceivable, but his present predicament made it undeniable. Fidel Castro has not only survived his shot. He had fought and killed a crocodile, then he had successfully ambushed him in close-quarters-combat while wearing its head like a hat. The Reckoner could not even begin to imagine how his target had conceived of such a plan.

Nevertheless, the plan had succeeded in neutralizing himself, and the Reckoner had no idea why.

However, the Reckoner knew this: when his predictions did not match the facts, it was his theories that were wrong, not the world. The experiment this time had failed utterly, placing into jeopardy not only significant parts of his human-behavior theorems but his very life, the experimenter’s. There was no longer any point in salvaging this enterprise. The highest priority now was to preserve himself, so he would have the chance and the time to revise his theories, correct his mistakes.

Conundrum: Fidel Castro has put him under a stranglehold. He had the power of life and death over him. Reasoning was unlikely to work, especially when he can’t presently talk. What other solution was there? He remembered The Slinger’s bloody mouth, the wordless cries…

That was how it was done, then.

He flailed, he heaved, he tore at Fidel’s indomitable arm. Then slowly, he let all the energy drain out of his body, an easy task considering his present state of fatigue. Finally, his head lolled lifelessly in his target’s arms, and he feigned stillness.

The Reckoner knew from his observations that Fidel Castro often refused to kill, even if it would be far more expedient to do so. The problem was in invoking this unusual tendency which he did not show against all his opponents. And the best way to make him select this choice was to deny him the choice entirely.



Stamina kill. The body went still and limp - the Reckoner was either dead or unconscious. Either way, it suited Fidel just fine. He rummaged whatever he could from the Reckoner, but the only things he opted to keep were the man’s tri-oculars and sniper rifle. It was quite a weapon, so customized that Fidel wasn’t sure what make or model it was, and even if he couldn’t figure out anything but its most basic functions, it would still suit him just fine. He slinged it over his shoulders, noting its excellent weight distribution.

Fidel then recovered his CQC knife and .45, and as he screwed the silencer back on, he looked back at the unmoving body of the Reckoner. If the man was still alive, he’d wake up with quite a headache… he’d have trouble finding his gear. Without his scopes and his gun, would he still continue the pursuit?

It didn’t matter, Fidel still had a rendezvous to keep.



Within the interiors of the landing craft, a shadowy figure brooded as she made telepathic commune with her sisters – wrapping her leathery wings around herself like a cloak of darkness. Enter.

A figure entered the chamber, his silent and gracefully bird-like gait betraying his lumbering size. Despite the absence of light, one could make out his pale skin and blue eyes, almost glowing in the dark – the superior product of the manipulation and combination of dinosaurian and Aryan genes.

Speak.

“The compsognathid scouts have mapped out the full extent of the facilities. The humans are heavily armed, they will resist.”

They will be slaughtered.

“It will be a hard battle, but yes, we will triumph,” Adolph the Aryanosaur confirmed. “The stratagem will be a success – they will not expect a simultaneous strike on all points. Their forces are unequally distributed, while their strong points can mount a formidable defense, they must concentrate the totality of their forces into a single cohesive front to hold against what we will unleash upon them. We will concentrate our attack on that strong point, attacking their primary positions with our own primary forces. At the same time, our secondary forces will systematically exterminate their dispersed units.”

Good. I will lead the main attack.

“Of course,” Adolph nodded. “I will go now to prepare my brothers.”

The Aryanosaur left, leaving the Matriarch Aggressive alone in her chamber. Then she reared up, spreading her wings like some great archosaurian bat, and resumed her telepathic commune with her sisters.

The half-human mongrel certainly has his uses, Aggressive thought-spoke. The plan will commence. After we have purged this miserable jungle of the humans, we will acquire what we seek. I hope, Methodical, that your pet has not led us on a fool’s errand.

From an underwater lair thousands of miles away, the Matriarch in question replied with her own thought-voice: And I hope, Aggressive, that you will maintain discretion and a low casualty-count on our side.

I can only assure you, Methodical, that by the end of this battle, this pitiful place will be wiped clean of the human scourge. For New Pangaea!

For New Pangaea.

[Sidewinder]

Good chapters, but you should take care to minimize the technobabble regarding certain items of equipment. For example, to convert a .50 caliber (12.7 mm) sniper rifle to 7.62 mm, you'd have to replace the barrel (firing a 7.62 mm bullet from a 12.7 mm barrel will result in the bullet bouncing around inside the barrel, killing accuracy), the bolt (a 7.62 mm casing will not fit in a bolt designed for a 12.7 mm casing, and vice versa), the recoil mechanism and the action (assuming this is a semiautomatic weapon)... It would make more sense for the Reckoner to either carry two rifles in two different calibers, or a weapon with two barrels for two different calibers, like the Crossfire Mk 1 Pump Action Rifle/Shotgun combination weapon in 5.56 mm NATO/12 Gauge).

By the way, American-made Claymores have a plastic casing. It's possible foreign-made Claymores have a metal casing-- I don't know enough about mines to say, although it's likely they'd also have plastic casings, so the enemy can't use metal detectors to find them.

[Crazedwraith]

Sidewinder. The 7.62 rounds are Saboted so they're enlarged enough to fire from the .50cal barrell.

[Sidewinder]

Sidewinder. The 7.62 rounds are Saboted so they're enlarged enough to fire from the .50cal barrell.

The 7.62 mm Saboted Light Armor Penetrator (SLAP) was developed by the US military and used as ammo for machine guns and sniper rifles, but testing revealed that a SLAP had a tendency to bounce around inside the gun barrel and damage it. When Shroom Man 777 mentioned 7.62 mm sabot rounds, I assumed he meant SLAPs designed for 7.62 mm rifles, not SLAPs designed for .50 caliber rifles.

By the way, here's more data on the SLAP.

Background: During the 1980s, the Marine Corps invested in both .50 caliber and 7.62 x 51 SLAP concepts. The .50 caliber effort was very successful and extends the light armor capability of the M2 Heavy Machine Gun significantly. The 7.62mm effort was not successful in the M60 and caused catastrophic barrel failures due to in-bore break-up of the sabot and the penetrator puncturing the side of the barrel. Also, its increase in penetration was not on the same order of magnitude as the .50 caliber SLAP's.

[Shroom Man 777]

In this case, then, DINO EATER's technobabble is at least somewhat correct. Not like Star Trek.

Hooray!

[Ford Prefect]

The 7.62 mm Saboted Light Armor Penetrator (SLAP) was developed by the US military and used as ammo for machine guns and sniper rifles, but testing revealed that a SLAP had a tendency to bounce around inside the gun barrel and damage it. When Shroom Man 777 mentioned 7.62 mm sabot rounds, I assumed he meant SLAPs designed for 7.62 mm rifles, not SLAPs designed for .50 caliber rifles.

Sidewinder, keep in mind that OZ Comix! has just plain better technology than we do. it would be trivially easy for some company or group to put together a saboted round like those used by Twist. In-bore break-up of the sabot is unlikely.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Holy Shit! That was fucking long and FUCKING AWESOME Shroomie!

I liked the part with Fidel's kidney. Inspired by Serenity much?

Also liked the reference to Carlos Hathcock.

All in all FUCKING AWESOME! WRITE MORE RIGHT NOW!

[Big Orange]

Very good, but once again Castro spares yet another Problem Solvers' life, despite maybe coming back as a serious threat later later on, yet has no compunction about slitting a normal guy's throat while he's sleeping...

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah...well. They're not my characters to kill *grumbles*

And hey, goons are expendable.

Yeah, I know his inability to kill named characters is annoying. I mean, damn it, who'da thunk I'd ever write myself into a corner by having my protagonist slaughter everyone in his path?

Don't worry though, the later Problem Solvers will have their shit ruined in worse ways.

EDIT:

Hrm. The following chapters will be much more faster paced. This chapter was partially to emulate the bits in Snake Eater where Snake fucks around in the jungle. The next chapter? It's time for Snake to get on the motorcycle, rip off his shirt, wear that crocodile cap and blast away with his machinegun going "RAAAAH!" while the nuclear death tank comes in at Mach 3!