Man-down chpt 2

With a slight vibration the sleek black helicopter clipped silently through the canyon. Only a dull red light could be seen coming from within the cramped cockpit.
"Put that out, these bastards 'ill shoot anything they see." The pilot hissed. The cigarette was stamped dead. The helicopter swung left and entered a wide open cravase before sailing out over open fields. Skimming low its passage was marked by the dancing of the poppy flowers below. Banking left the chopper came in low and landed, blades spinning with a bumblebee furry.
Six men jumped out, their black uniforms masking them against the darkness of the night. Riddick looked about, his night-vision goggles making him look more like some alien killer than a human soldier. It was clear. Or clear enough for them to get off the chopper he thought to himself as he watched the distant horizon. Just one kilometer away was the farmhouse and Major. How his team had managed to get themselves captured Riddick wasn't sure, and Daikon's thoughts on the matter only showed the man's contempt for the old Major's unit. But the boys of the Sentinal team were not fools, and certainly not cowards. Something bad must be at the farm. Very bad.
Shrugging off the dark cloud of thoughts he signaled for the chopper to leave. Like the archangel of death the helicopter rose into the air and vanished into the darkness, leaving but the faintest of purring noises to lull the poppies back into stillness. Then the men began to move. Not running, but moving quickly and stealthily. Careful to keep one another within sight range, but no close enough to make an effective double target for a randomly thrown grenade.
After moving forward for half a tick Riddick held up his black gloved hand, clenched fist. The team froze and as one dropped to the ground. Opticle pulled out his scope and ran a quick glance over the farm. It was quiet. Two men patrolled the main parking area, one man was on top of the silo, and another with a ... dog was wandering.
"Shit. We got a dog." He hissed.
"Shit."
"Yeah."
"No I mean, shit, I think I stood in shit." Rommel said as he looked at his boot.
The others stifled a laugh. It was cut short by the cold shot that rang out from within the farm. All eyes fixed on the farmhouse.

"D'ju will talk, d'ju bitch!" Screamed El Moffi Mahandupyou Khan. He was turning purple and had just fired a hole through the roof of the clapped out farm house. But his prisoner hadn't flinched.
"I! I d'a great El Moffi Mahandupyou Khan, son of Im Dahardon Khan Falazel shall make you pig dog American speak, by Allah."
"I'm British you uncouth twat." Yanek replied calmly, as if finishing off a round of bridge.
"Hah! By d'a powers of Allah I have made the dog bitch son of whore speak!" Khan cried out, looking to his men for religious support. They nodded their turbined heads, causing a small avalanche of ceiling dust to sprinkle about. Khan moved slowly around Yanek, as if deciding where to scream from next. But he couldn't seem to find the right place.
"As we speak, I haff an entire battalion of elite jihad of men coming here. So speak before they arrive and I can promise d'ju a quick death." He said eventually, leaning in close to Yanek's ear. But the stench of his breath made Yanek recoil. This was misread as fear by El Moffi.
"D'jess d'ju should be afraid. I know tings. Tings that will hurt you in deep places. We don't want that now do we?" He cooed.
Yanek ran a mental scan through his sexual repertoire and decided El Moffi would be the one surprised. But instead of revealing his penchant for whips and chains, Yanek decided to play along.
"OK. I give up. What do you want to know?" He knew the Major would never forgive him if photos of him and El Moffi in latex ever got out.
"Where is da next strike plan'ned for?"
"Shitsbiggerthanminestan." Yanek said coldly.
"Shitsbiggerthanminestan? Hey Wakim d'ju heard of Shitsbig... shits what?"
"Shitsbiggerthanminestan. Just near Dickheadstanbul."
El Moffi looked to his mean who shrugged.
"Perhaps it is what they call Izbakbullastan?" One of them ventured.
"They know of Izbakbullastan? By Allah! Half our stores are there." El Moffi swore off a string of words Yanek knew referenced his own mother at least twice.
They hadn't known that Izbakbullastan, with is small goat herding population was a storehouse for opium. But they did now.
"When? When is da strike! Tell me know or I cut your tongue out!" El Moffi screamed.
"If you cut my tongue out, I won't be able to tell you." Yanek countered. It was one of the oldest in the book, but by the looks of El Moffi he was the sort who stole and then ate the book, or possibly used it in some way when shagging a goat.
"Hmmm. Good point." Khan pondered the difficult situation for a moment. Then an idea struck him with such force he had to slap is own forehead to keep it in.
"Then I will cut off your lips!" The rest of his team nodded approvingly. Very bad to not have lips, they all seemed to agree.
"But then I still won't be able to tell you."
Another moment of silence.
Then -
" - your throat?"
"I'll be dead."
Silence.
"Your heart?"
"Still dead."
Silence.
"Your liver."
"Sorry. Still dead. Try something less... likely to cause instant death."
Silence.
"Eh...?" One of them started but stopped in case he was wrong.
Silence.
"You ears?" Volunteered one of the guards.
Yanek slowly nodded.
"Not bad. Not bad at all... but not what I was thinking."
"Oh shit." El Moffi said, snapping his fingers.
"That's what I thought d'ju were thinking... hmmm" He visibly shrank back into thought.
Yanek wasn't buying time, he was owning the whole market. By now Major had probably worked out a cunning plan and was well on his way to circling these bastards and killing every one of them before Yanek did actually loose a body part. At this rate, Major had about six days.

Major was indeed locked in a ferocious battle of cunning. Slowly he was working his way up, towards freedom. Inch by inch he crawled upwards. Fingers gripping here, slipping there, scrabbling to find purchase.
"Slowly Major - don't rush it." Scorch urged from the shadows.
Sweat was building on Majors brow.
"Careful. Careful!" Godfather looked away. It was too close!
"Nearly there..." Hissed Major as he dared to reach up.
"Oh no!" He cried as he toppled over back to the dusty floor.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" He said as he rolled over, his hands still tied behind his back.
As were all the others.
"So close." Savannah said, hanging his head.
"One more inch and I could have reached it. And then! Ha! What freedom."
They all looked up at the small broken piece of nail.
"Yeah but was it worth all that just to scratch an itch?" Godfather said coldly.

Rommel rolled left and came up, rifle poised to fire. But the guard hadn't seen him and was taking a leak against the wall. Quickly Rommel rushed up behind him, and with one terrible wrench of his hands broke the man's concentration and neck. As the body fell it pee'd upwards, a little golden fountain splashing against the wall. In the cold moonlight it looked like a cross. For a moment Rommel was taken aback. Was this a sign? Could his destiny be written by the urine of an Islamic opium pushing soldier?
As Rommel contemplated God, the universe and everything else Opticle was having his own problems. The hillock that overlooked the farm had seemed at first glance the perfect hill from which to snipe. Gaining its summit had been easy for the lithe young warrior. Staying there however was proving to be something of a hero's battle. 'There are certain black ants found in this part of the world,' or so the text book on this region had begun, 'these ferocious creatures favour high vantage points from which to spy out their domain, which they defend by squirting tiny jets of acid from their nasal passages at their enemies.' The acid smelt terrible and had a slightly salty taste. Already his eyes were beginning to tear up, and as much as he wiped them clear, they kept watering.
"God damned shit hole." He muttered through sobs.
Watching their sniper for a moment Riddick turned to Daikon.
"What the fuck do you think he's doing?" Riddick asked in sign language. Daikon looked at his boss for a moment before realizing that he wasn't having a seizure but attempting to communicate. Although sign language had been mandatory - as a means of silent communication - Daikon had always thought it was for deaf people. And since he wasn't deaf he hadn't really thought it important to learn. But he tried to respond nonetheless.
"My chicken ate a spoonful of cow juice and shat out my grandmother." He calmly signed.
Riddick paused.
As captain of his team he had naturally been trained in the secret arts of sign language. But like his subordinate he too had decided that if he went deaf he'd sooner shoot himself than live, so he too had failed to grasp the intricacies of the gestures. But not wanting to show incompetence in front of his junior he nodded emphatically and than pointed to the outer building of the farm.
"Into her shall I go. You will follow for some double team action."
Daikon nodded sagely.
"And we can use some orange peel as lubricant." He signed, confident that his superior didn't understand a word of it.
"Me first." Riddick finished, confident that Daikon didn't have a clue.
But after a moment of adjusting their tunics they headed out towards the farm.

Ecko 7's head came up, and was pushed down again sharply. Only the thrashing of his arms in the water made any noise. He flailed about, trying to find anything he could to hit his attacker with. But nothing came to hand in the frigid water. So he pushed up.
"Oh God! Bonta! Help!" He managed before being pushed under the water again. The force pushing him down knocked the air from his lungs and he gulped down a great gill full of water. This was not good.
Bonta however was having just as much fun. A knife stuck out from his leg, the blood soaking the dark weave of his pants black in the moonlight. But his hand was steady, and his pistol was pointing directly at his opponents pistol, pointing directly at his, pointing at it, pointing at it. There they stood: Bonta versus Whizzes Flafhallan; a trained military soldier from Leeds versus a soft porn salesman from south Iraq. Whizzes and his friend Julka had stumbled across Bonta and Ecko as they were making their way forward. And with surprising guile and a little bit of luck had managed to get the drop on the soldiers. Allah had been praised for an instant until Bonta and Ecko had started fighting back.
Now Julka was trying to drown Ecko in the stream that held Dare Devils body, whilst Whizzes had managed to get his knife stuck in Bonta's leg before this Mexican standoff had happened. Bonta calmly looked into the dark panicked eyes of his opponent. He was just a boy. A boy with a loaded 9mm.
"Bonta!" A garbled call sounded from somewhere close.
In that instant Bonta shifted his eyes to the location of the noise and heard the rapport of the pistol. But he didn't feel anything. Except the snap of his own silenced weapon.
"Bonta!" It was a cry of a drowning man.
A drowning man would clutch at a straw or so it said. Well Ecko was a drowning man, but had no straw to clutch at. So he went with the trout instead. It had tried to make a mad dash past the writing wet human and he'd gripped it with one desperate hand and was wielding it like some great wet fish, which it was. Unfortunately the fish had feinted from the trauma of seeing Ecko's face underwater and screaming,  and so was limp, making it a most irksome club.
As lights flashed before he eyes, and the bile from his stomach began to rise the pressure from behind his head suddenly became a pulling force and Bonta pulled him clear of the water.
But the water was not clear of him, or his lungs. He gurgled happily as a warm feeling began to creep over him. Then he realized it was Bonta who was creeping over him, and whose grizzled suddenly lips met his own. The sensation of having a large hairy man forcibly blowing his own breath deep into ones body was enough to break the happy place Ecko 7 had found forever.
Instantly he came alive. The water hurled from his lungs and he was on his feet backing away hands in front of him to ward off the lips of Bonta.
"m'live. M'live!" He muttered.
"What?" Bonta questioned as he looked at the bedraggled Ecko.
"What? What!" Screamed Ecko in amazement. "I felt tongue you prick!"
"Umm..."
"YOUR TONGUE!" Ecko howled in terror and anger.
"Oh. We'll it got you going didn't it."
"I'd have preferred to die."
"That can still be arranged." Bonta said calmly pulling Whizzes' knife from his leg and wrapping a bandage around the wound.