Train to Tartaurus

  "How can you be so stupid?", Johnson yelled at the new recruit in a whispered growl. Thompson had just transferred into the unit last week, but he seemed to be all thumbs. Mistakes piled up like he was on a quest to see just how many he could collect.

  "I'm sorry, Sir, I don't know what happened. I thought I had everything secured" Thompson said, all the while thinking, "Oh great, another foul-up. What the hell is wrong with you soldier?"

  Johnson had to get away from the kid before he lost his temper and raised his voice, giving away their location. "Just get that damned rifle secured before someone hears you and gets the drop on us before we even know what hit us. You get us killed and I swear I will come back and haunt every member of your family for as long as they live."

  The mission was a simple task, really. Recon the train carrying supplies, noting times, troops, and the trains speed. When the time was right, the demo team could then sneak in and not only destroy the train, tracks, but the bridge as well. If they took out twenty or thirty of Sanchez's men at the same time, good. With every man under strict order to be in utter silence. The last thing they could afford was some new guy blowing it by letting his rifle get away from him coming through the canyon. Johnson could hear the train coming down through the pass. He was just getting ready to signal for unit two, Ramirez and Lee, to  get into position and start the head count of the guerrillas located just over the next rise, when all hell broke loose. From his six, he heard "Alto, Alto" from the sentry who had just come upon the six-man unit sneaking up on Sanchez's base in the final hours before daybreak.

  Before he could even make a sound, Johnson was cut down, the sound of the enemy's machine gun muffled by the squealing coming from the train that was beginning to apply the brakes and bring it to a halt. As he felt the bullets enter his body, all Johnson could think of was "Damn kid, I told him to be quiet." As the train began to come to a stop, the smallest man from Bravo Team had just turned to Thompson to say "all right kid you ready to go?".

  As he turned to his left, Turner saw the sentry smile, actually smile, as he pulled the trigger and sent a burst of three rounds piercing the chest of the former Notre Dame running back. Joe Turner had generally been able to outrun any trouble using his speed and stature to his advantage. This time however, his quickness failed him, as he never even had the chance to pull his side arm from it's holster. In his final moments Turner watched as the remaining member of the team, Thompson, was marched from their position not two hundred yards to the train they had been sent so spy on and ultimately to destroy.

  Now the troops belonging to Colonel Ramone Antonio Sanchez, aka the butcher from Rillito Rojo, began to unload the trainload of supplies and ammo. Supplies to be used against the Americans and the Columbian troops sent to stop them. Once emptied the train would be turned around and headed back for yet another load. Meanwhile, Thompson was having the last of his uniform removed from his badly beaten body.

  Once they had determined that he knew nothing, than the Americano was worth exactly that, nothing. His final punishment for letting the butt of his rifle strike the rock walls of the canyon was ironic in a bizarre twist of fate.

  Sent to recon the train and it's route, Thompson would get to see both very closely, well as close as one could see with one eye swelled shut from the beating he had taken. As he screamed in pain due to a dislocated shoulder and three gunshot wounds, Thompson felt himself turned horizontally and tied naked to the front of the engine's brush guard. Sanchez's men had thought it only fitting that the young man be given one last look at what he had been sent to observe. His superiors would have given their eye teeth for the intel he would get. Unfortunately, he would never be able to give them since his was to be a one way ticket, to Tartaurus.