Chapter 227: Alone, Behind Enemy Lines
In the serene night sky, the only audible sound that could be heard was the rustling of the wind that passed around the descending soldiers, who despite their fall, still had their composure maintained, looking relaxed while their eyes remained focused on the rapidly decreasing numerals that were materializing in front of their eyes.
When they reached a certain altitude during their fall "FRRRRR," the electrically powered thrusters came to life after manifesting on the chest of these soldiers, marginally reducing their velocity while at the same time expertly adjusting their trajectory and aligning them on their landing location before the thrusters retracted as if they never existent in the first place.
Following the appearance of the first thruster after which they quickly got hidden again, a few more of such thrusters started appearing at certain intervals in different locations on the armor, reducing the soldiers' falling speed at the same time also stabilizing them in the fall before retracting once again, this appearance and disappearance of the thrusters continued for a few more times.
Their fall continued for a few more seconds before, "FRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR," the thruster appeared once again, but this time they were blasting at their full power when the soldiers were a mere ten meters away from the ground. Their velocity was dwindled to near zero before the thrusters deactivated when the soldiers were just five meters above the ground, leaving the rest of the fall to be handled by themselves, which they easily took care of by simply bending their knees the moment their legs were about to touch the ground and together with the armor, they were easily able to absorb the rest of the energy without any trouble.
"Grim Reapers on the ground," the team leader reported back to the headquarters as the soldiers unholstered their weapons from their left hips and started advancing towards a very distant building.
For those who were familiar with a few things about Esparia, they would recognize that this building was none other than the Presidential palace of Esparia, clearly hinting at what kind of mission this group of twenty soldiers were sent to accomplish.
...
"As you can see, there are more than five thousand soldiers and other personnel inside the Presidential Palace. Our objective is to extract the president and the high command without being discovered. So, we will be adhering to Athena's guidance in the mission and will be divided into four teams, reconvening by the end of the first phase of the mission. I will be the team leader for team Alpha; for team Bravo, Alan will be leading it; for team Charlie, it will be Shamim and lastly, team Delta, will be led by Alex." When he concluded appointing the team leaders of the respective teams, the headgears automatically assigned the remaining soldiers to these different teams, marking them by distinct color surroundings, only to be seen by those wearing headgears.
"Start moving out," Alan commanded as he set off, closely followed behind by his team, en route to their designated entry point.
Upon seeing Alan leave, the other team leaders also took command of their team to move in, which the soldiers followed without any defiance to their promptly chosen team leaders.
As each team was on their way, they effortlessly navigated the secured infrastructure by utilizing their technological advantage of being able to know the location of every CCTV blind spots and patrol teams, thus, they didn't face any obstructions on their way as they passed through all of the checkpoints that were erected by the soldiers and mercenaries entrusted with safeguarding the Presidential Palace which contained the core command structure that was behind orchestrating the conflict.
......
Not long later, in a concealed location which also doubled as an access route to the palace walls, a group of three palace guards could be seen standing guard.
Now they weren't, since they currently lay lifeless on the ground, victims of Team Alpha's stealthy advance. With that, Athena took over radio frequencies of the dead soldiers' radios to respond and keep the facade of them still being alive whenever the roll call was made.
Similar scenarios could be seen happening simultaneously in different directions, as each team got closer and closer to the heavily fortified palace walls, their synchronized maneuvers a testament to their expertise.
Team Bravo was the first one to reach the walls, arriving ahead of the other three teams. Without waiting for their companions, they started doing a short jog towards the wall. As they got closer, their pace accelerated, just when they were five meters away from hitting the wall, they jumped.
With the assistance of the armors, they were thrown fifteen meters into the air, just two meters short of scaling the wall, but just then, the armor's boosters sprang back to life, helping them get higher and scale the remaining two meters. At the same time, they started reducing their speed of falling after the gravity finally won against them just as they had scaled the wall and started falling down, to avoid making any noise which could possibly alert someone or trigger an analog sensor.
After surmounting the wall with efficiency and silently, they continued moving discreetly through the darkness, eliminating any enemy they met on their way as quietly as possible with calculated precision, while Athena would immediately assume control over the dead soldier's communication systems, maintaining the illusion of everything being normal.
Similar tactics were used by other teams who were slightly behind team Bravo, who were on the lead due to their route being the least guarded one.
This progress continued unobstructedly until the first team finally arrived at an obscure-looking building. On the outside, it projected an appearance of an abandoned building, seemingly imitating an under-maintained building- a pretty convincing charade would have been if it was in an undeveloped locale, but it was conspicuously out of place since it was in the compounds of the Presidential Palace, the disheveled building inside a highly maintained palace acted as nothing other than a massive beam for anyone who was smart enough to think about it for a few moments.
Arriving at the closed door, the team didn't hesitate for even a second before they raised their guns and pulled their triggers twice, sending bullets through the door.
Subsequently, it was followed by the resonating of thuds as ten soldiers who were behind the door, guarding the building's entrance, fell in unison, having started their journey to the next life just a few seconds ago.
Unperturbed after killing the guards behind, Team Bravo's leader, Alan, just walked to the door and extended his hand to put it on the doorknob before he squeezed his hand as if he was squishing a sponge, causing the doorknob to cave in on itself together with the lock behind it, thus opening the bullet holed door which wasn't heavily guarded due to it being just an entrance door with more of them inside leading to their destination.
"Let's wait for the other teams inside," Alan declared as he swung open the squeaking door and walked inside the building, followed by his team members, who immediately started to move the bodies of the dead soldiers to take their positions while they waited for their fellow soldiers to arrive so that they could coordinate their advancement toward the bunker, capturing the leadership to end the war once and for all.