Bear Surgery
Trooper Daniel "Hotfoot" Maclane could hardly see the jumpmaster in the blacked-out interior of the C-141. He could hear the man all right though. The burly air crewman stomped his foot on the steel decking of the huge plane as he stood up.

"Get ready!"

The rest of the mixed bag of SAS, Delta Force and SEAL troopers slid to the edge of their folded metal seats, tightening straps and making final checks on weapons. The latter ranged from 'Room broom' MP5K submachine guns firing 9mm Parabellum to heavy 23-pound Haskins rifles with ten-power scopes capable of spitting out massive HE/incendiary rounds, each with the ability to blow a man in half.

The red light flashed, and the jumpmaster bellowed.

"Stand up!"

Men rose to their feet, each one encumbered by weapons, demo and body armor. Maclane pushed himself up as well; making sure that his MP5 was securely fastened to his pack. The rear ramp went down and the howling of the wind increased. The jump would be HALO, High Altitude Low Opening, were each man would plummet in a free fall and pull his ripcord at two and a half thousand feet. Maclane forced his mind to be calm as the men readied for the jump.

The war had been going badly on the US west Coast; heavy Soviet tanks having hammered the living crap out of several under strength Home Guard divisions. Trying to stem to flow, an unknown staff officer had suggested a surgical strike on the bear's Eastern flank. However, any attempt to land on the Soviet shore would have to do so under the looming threat of a Soviet nuclear missile complex in the Ural Mountains. That was why the three C-141's had been filled with some of the best-trained troops the Alliance had to offer... a total of some three hundred crack commandos skilled in close-range assault, demolitions, sniping, and a host of other skills.

Their mission: To take out the soviet missile base.

The green light came on... and the men rushed out, hurling themselves into the void. Far below, Maclane could see the Soviet base, the massive shapes of the missile silos towering over the barracks, SAM's, guns and power plants.

The planes had turned back, but AA was still coming up and bursting in the sky. Several shells exploded among the men, killing a few and leaving others mortally wounded and incapacitated. The others came down, invisible against the dark sky and too small to be detected by radar.

Maclane yanked on the ripcord, and his chute of black special-ops silk bloomed. Around him, others were also gliding earthwards, silent angels of doom.

All would have been rosy had it not been for the idea of some overexcited conscript down below. The planes were long gone, and his flare never got high enough to illuminate them even if they had been still flying right over the base. However, the bright light had the immediate effect of throwing the paratroopers into stark relief. Maclane saw his life pass in front of his eyes in those few seconds of amazing silence... the conscripts below obviously caught off-guard by the sudden appearance of three hundred black-clad parachutists over their base.

Then all hell broke loose.

Fire from dozens of guns streaked skywards, the air literally whizzing with bullets. Maclane grunted as a Russian 7.62mm round struck at an acute angle and was deflected by his chest armour. The same round cut the tether line attaching him to his equipment bundle, and Maclane could do nothing as his pack and weapon fell earthwards, leaving him with only a .45 pistol. Other men were not as lucky, some literally disintegrating to flak cannon hits and others punctured by hot lead to die screaming in the harness.

The ground rushed up, and Maclane hit it hard in a PLF, Parachute Landing Fall. Flying lead was kicking up the ground around him, and Maclane struck the quick release on his chute, struggling clear of the billowing silk and whipping out his .45.

At that moment, a searchlight mounted on the perimeter of the base starting storming the area around him. Maclane leapt to his feet and forced himself to run, knowing that the black silk that had camouflaged him against the sky was now a liability as it lay on the white snow.

Men around him were being chopped down by gunfire. Maclane nearly ran into range of an automated gun himself. The twin-barreled Vulcan weapon spun to face him, just as another trooper dropped neatly behind it. The gun hesitated and went after the second man instead, sawing him into two and sending both his legs cart wheeling lazily into the sky. Maclane spun round and raced the other way, towards a Russian barracks. Conscripts were pouring out, dazed and still half-asleep as officers tried to get them into a resemblance of fighting order. Maclane cursed his lack of
an automatic weapon viciously... the soviets were bunching up in front of the barracks, making a perfect target. Several of the soldiers were firing at random into the air, hoping to hit the Allied paratroops.

At that moment however, a Russian searchlight operator had his assistant killed messily in front of him. In his fear, he spun the searchlight at the closest group of muzzle flashes he could see, illuminating the Russian conscripts in front of the barracks for a moment. That was all the time the elite Allied commandos needed to acquire the new targets. Fire from all directions converged and punched through the men, bowling them over in seconds. Another SAS burst, like the punctuation mark of a long sentence, took the face of the searchlight operator on a one-way trip to the searchlight tower's wall. The searchlight itself was taken out, shattered under the impact of a huge Haskins slug.

The commandos were now in their element. Running flat out with the endurance and speed of top athletes, they took out stunned Russians on the move, leaving behind a trail of contorted corpses, some of them still in their nightclothes, as they split up for the objectives.

The main door of the radar center exploded inwards, the huge armored pieces flying inwards under the overpressure of planted shaped charges. Commandos rushed in, taking down the communications personnel 'on the fly', killing most with accurate shots to the cranium. Most of the latter were unarmed, but they were still wearing uniform. The allied troopers gave no quarter, having seen the after-action reports on the SPETS attack of New York. The soviet commandos had attacked a weapons factory and fled into a hospital when armor had arrived to engage them. They had been taken on by allied commando teams in merciless room-to-room fighting, the floors awash with the blood and offal of soldiers and civilians and the air thick with the oaths and moans of the dying. In their final act of defiance, the remainder had retreated behind human hostages and detonated the plastique charges that they had hastily planted on the foundations of the building. Hundreds of patients and medical staff, together with the remaining SPETS and many allied troopers, were killed in the explosion and subsequent collapse of the building.

The communications went down within minutes, plastique charges having blown off the antennas on the roof of the building. Groups of commandos had taken positions in the base and were pouring a hail of fire into the barracks, pinning down the rest of the base guards. Maclane paused for a moment to pull an AK and several magazines from the bodies of two soviets who had run from a side door in one of the missile silos. Both had been killed by double-taps in the head, Maclane having aimed under the rim of their steel helmets at the leather facemask that most of the conscripts wore to ward off the cold. There was sound behind him and he spun, AK up and readied.

The two men rushing towards him were not Russians... rather, they were 'Sparky' Hayes, an SAS electronics expert, and 'Doomsday', one of the most proficient demo men in the SAS. Sparky grinned and pointed at the door... "Let's pay Ivan a house call!"

The three of them went down the stairs that the Russians had come up from,
MP5's raised and ready. They came to a locked hatchway, Doomsday immediately unslinged his pack and rigging up a breaching charge.

"Fire in the hole!" Doomsday called as he ran back to the two to shelter in the stairway. The men released the chin straps on their helmets, jamming the pots down hard on their heads and clasping their hands over their ears, mouths open and eyes shut.

The concussion of the explosion under their helmets could cause the pots to 'lift-off'... if the straps were fastened, the result would be a nasty broken jaw.

The charge blew the door wide open, revealing a long corridor that lead down straight to the launch center of the silo. The Soviets had rigged up cameras and sentry guns to watch the corridor, deeming them more reliable than human sentries. However, they were now useless, having been hamstrung by the destruction of the tesla generators south of the base by Delta men. Likewise, the fearsome Tesla coils were now hapless ornamental Christmas trees that watched the carnage in the snowscape around them silently.

The men stopped at the entrance to the launch center.

Both Doomsday and Maclane were better trained as room-clearers than Sparky, so they would go in first. However, the door was wide enough only for one. They were fast friends, close as brothers in the elite cadre that was the SAS. Doomsday solemnly produced his "Lucky" coin and flipped it... the two friends old way of deciding who would get the nastier job. Doomsday always took Heads, Maclane took tails. Both had jealously guarded coins that each deemed lucky for him.

Maclane lost.

He readied himself as Sparky prepared to pull the plug on the detonator key that Doomsday had passed to him. Doomsday would follow right behind Maclane.

There was not much resistance... Only one soviet launch officer was armed and he promptly threw down his pistol when faced with the three armored Special Forces troops. The men around him raised their hands in surrender upon seeing their leader give up.

Sparky set to work, overriding the safety devices as he disarmed the devices. A quick modification to the launching software set the nukes to launch in 5 minutes... with the silo doors still locked. The missile would simply demolish itself in the impact... the disarmed nuclear warhead smashed into useless junk by the collision and consumed by the ensuing rocket-fuel fire. With the shaft jammed with fire and missile wreckage, the silo would be rendered useless.

The men left the launch center with the launch officers locked in their mess hall. They could not shoot them... that was one of the fundamental differences between the two forces: The Allies did not shoot men who had surrendered.

Upon reaching the surface however, Maclane received bad news over the radio. "Calling all Crockett units... This is Overmatch. We are under attack. Heavy soviet armor is attempting to break into the base."

Overwatch consisted of mainly SAS snipers... they simply didn't have the equipment to deal with the soviet Rhino tanks now attempting to roll up the mountain road into the embattled base. The Crockett units, namely the ones doing the actual assault on the base, were in danger of being caught by soviet armor and losing their LZ, Landing Zone.

If the Rhinos broke through, the Blackhawks would not be able to extract the men. "This is Overwatch..." The voice sounded out of breath, "We're pulling back... heavy casualties, half of us are down... the CO has been hit in the head... We can't hold them off much longer!"

A new voice broke over the radio.

"This is Phantom Five Zero. We have them on radar."

High above the embattled Overwatch units, Harrier jets shrieked down, releasing a hail of Maverick anti-armour missiles. The first three Rhinos slewed out of the formation, armour plates torn off their flanks by internal explosions as HEAT jets from the Maverick warheads blowtorched through their weaker top armor, setting off their ammunition and fuel, immolating the crews alive.

The Bear struck back, Flak trucks unleashing a torrent of shrapnel into the air, sending hot metal into the lead Harrier. It exploded in a fiery supernova, flinging blazing fuel and torn metal earthwards.

A sudden sound startled Maclane. It was terribly familiar, yet the source remained elusive from him until he looked straight up.

There was a Tesla Coil behind... and it was powering up.

"Run!" Maclane shouted as he leapt to his feet, knowing that even elite commandos were not immune to Russia's best defense system.

The two other commandos sprinted for cover... but a crackling arc of man-made lightning caught poor Sparky in the back. He gave a short howl in the instant before the out lashing of electrical energy turned him into a human firecracker.

Maclane, shaking with shock and anger, stared at the scorched patch where Sparky used to be... there was nothing left of him... which was to be expected by a weapon that turned Grizzly tanks into molten slag heaps in seconds.

There were other shouts and expletives on the net as commandos were suddenly put under fire from automated guns and Tesla coils. An urgent voice broke through the radio. "This is Eagle One! All Crockett units! The soviets have a back-up nuclear power plant south of the base! A soviet Iron Curtain defense system has also been detected! You are ordered to take out all anti-aircraft defenses at once!"

Maclane was startled... Eagle One was General Thorn himself. The fact that he had taken command personally showed the seriousness of the situation. If the commandos did not do something soon... they were going to receive one hell of a bear hug from the Iron-curtained Rhinos.

The commandos swung into action, risking all to take out the Flak cannons that were now active and hammering the retreating Harriers, which had been reduced to 6 of the original dozen jets. The men paid a terrible price... for most of the Flak cannons had been sited to receive the most protection from Tesla and sentry guns. But one by one, the Flak cannons started to fall silent.

Maclane and Doomsday took cover from a sentry gun beside the burning ruins of a knocked-out Flak Cannon. The little robotic bastard of a gun had been sited well, and the last three Flak Cannons were sitting pretty and safe behind it.

Maclane and Doomsday looked at each other... the Rhinos were already at the front door and General Thorn had commenced a count-down on the radio to Iron Curtain activation. Doomsday produced his coin and flipped it. It was heads.

"I win, so you follow my plan. I distract the gun while you go and take it out." Maclane started to protest, knowing that Doomsday was putting himself in great risk. But Doomsday was firm.

"Coin says it. No arguing. Now move!"

The demoman sprinted off towards the right, the sentry tracking him with a erupting wall of shells. Maclane cussed loudly and ran as fast as he could to get behind the gun.

He was there in seconds, but they felt like years to him, hearing the savage tearing of the twin-barreled gun as he ran closer to it, expecting it to swivel around and smear him in a heart-stopping instant.

He yanked two grenades from his belt order and jammed them under the flexible ammunition feed belts, diving behind a Flak cannon for cover.

The twin explosions cut off the ammo chain, and the gunfire stopped, the barrels whirring and the gun still active. The sentry spun around to track him, the multiple barrels spinning. However, without ammo it was as good as dead.

Maclane tried to spot Doomsday, but the man had disappeared. He swiftly took
care of the remaining Flak cannons and radioed General Thorn.

Like the angels of salvation came the FA-18 Hornets from the carriers that were now off the western coast. Just as the first Rhino rumbled into sight, swinging its massive barrel to face Maclane, a sudden streak of light came down on it like a thunderbolt from the heavens. The tank exploded from the impact of the Maverick, the massive turret spinning off the huge tank as its ammo cooked off.

The other tanks and Flak trucks were rapidly demolished, drowned under a flail of streaking missile fire. Metal hulks slewed and slowed to a halt while others simply disintegrated into multiple eruptions of fire and debris. A sudden glare of green lightning to the south told of the destruction of the soviet nuclear plant.

Above it all, the steady drone of hundreds of Blackhawk helicopters provided a counterpoint to the explosions... The Marines were coming in. It was no longer a simple extraction of Special Forces... General Thorn was sending in ground troops to take over the Russian base and establish Allied presence on Soviet soil.

Maclane watched the explosions in awe for a while... before proceeding to look for Doomsday.
They loaded them on the same Blackhawk. Doomsday had been hit in the leg and would be going home for treatment. Maclane noticed him clutching something in his left hand.

"What's that?" he asked.

Doomsday gave him a wry look, trying to smile despite the pain.

"Well, since I won't be doing any fighting for a while... Look at it."

Maclane took it... it was Doomsday's lucky coin. It had heads on both sides.

"You bastard!" Maclane said as he pulled something from his pocket.

It was another coin... ordinary in all aspects except one.

Both its faces showed tails.

Doomsday grinned
"Who Dares, Wins..." He managed to utter before morphine asserted its irresistible control.