{
  "description": "h2. On the road \n\n[section=Story]\n\nHunter lay prone on the hill amidst the long grasses, and waited. Rifle at the ready, he watched his assigned area through a high powered scope. It had only been a couple of hours, so things weren’t likely to change soon. He and the other teams were, as a matter of course, here very early. It was good form to do so in general, but leadership had some concerns about possible rats in their intelligence network, and so wanted to avoid any chance of an ambush.\n\nAnd the weather was pretty nice, Hunter decided. This wasn’t so bad, what with complete overcast conditions and a nice 70 degree afternoon. So he just kept watching, not feeling quite as much of the normal anxiety that often came from a high-profile operation like this. He was in a foreign land, waiting to oversee the kidnapping of a drug lord who was wanted dead or alive by every civilized nation on the planet. By all accounts, he should’ve been nervous.\n\nSomeone tapped his shoulder and he withdrew from the eyepiece and looked over at his spotter, who was looking through binoculars and appearing surprised. He indicated in a direction some thirty degrees from their assigned area, and Hunter turned the rifle gently to point in the area of interest.\n\nSomething was obviously going on. There was a large amount of dirt being kicked into the air, very likely from a vehicle, and a second later he found the source. A beat up, beige pickup truck with several people both in the cab and bed rumbled along the dirt road as if in a major hurry. Not only that, but they were headed right for the teams’ planned interception point.\n\n“Grassland, Echo-4.” Hunter spoke quietly into his radio, tracking the truck all the while.\n\n“Echo-4.”\n\n“Incoming contact on Eastbound Route 9, brown truck, 7 occupants, heading for pick-up point.”\n\n“Echo-4, positive ID?”\n\nHunter looked closely, but knew the answer already. These looked like grunts, and they seemed to have a blindfolded woman tied up in the bed of the truck.\n\n“Negative.”\n\n“Acknowledged, Echo-4. Standby.”\n\nAnd silence prevailed while Hunter and his spotter continued to watch the unexpected intruder. The truck seemed to be slowing, and disturbingly, came to a stop only about twenty yards from where the real target was supposed to be ambushed. People jumped out of the truck at once, several of whom had assault rifles or shotguns, and one of whom held a camera. Two of the men pulled the bound and blindfolded woman, a snow leopard who looked wildly out of place here, out into the dirt where she was held on her knees.\n\n“Grassland, Echo-4. Subjects exiting vehicle twenty yards from pick-up with a hostage.”\n\n“Echo-4, Grassland. Standby.”\n\nHunter shook his head in frustration. Clearly something was going on, and if these jokers didn’t fuck off in a hurry, they could ruin the entire operation. He guessed that Grassland wanted to wait and see if they would decide to leave without intervention. So he kept watching, breathing harder.\n\nThe woman on her knees was dragged out past the front of the truck, even closer to the ambush point. In fact, she was a scant fifty feet from the Echo-1 team, lying silently in the grass.\n\nThe man with the camera set up in front of her, kneeling on the road to face her. Most of the others piled up behind her on either side, brandishing their weapons. It looked like they might have been saying things, though it was impossible to tell with many of them wearing facial coverings.\n\nOne of them reached around her, knife in hand, and made a slashing motion toward her chest. After a moment, Hunter realized that he was hacking at her clothes, cutting them harshly off of her and throwing them to the side of the road. First came her shirt, then a blue bra that held her large breasts, and then her pants, and finally underwear.\n\nThen the snow leopard was bare naked, but still blindfolded and bound. The cloth was torn from her eyes, and she looked around in absolute terror. Hunter couldn’t help but notice again how little the leopard seemed to fit in; she must’ve been kidnapped from somewhere else, somewhere north maybe, and from the look of what was about to happen to her, she had either made some cartel very angry, or perhaps had failed to gain a ransom for her captors.\n\nEither way, he observed, judging by the treatment she was now receiving, Hunter guessed that she was about to find her naked body dismembered. Which was, still, provoking a higher-tiered concern in him regarding the primary mission. This was all well and sad for her, but quite frankly, this was threatening to get in the way of something much larger than these yuppies and their victim.\n\nSomething crackled over his radio.\n\n“Grassland, Echo 1. Seeking guidance, engage or retreat.”\n\nAt that, though perhaps it was Hunter’s imagination, but he thought one of the militants looked over in the direction of the still-hidden Echo-1 team.\n\n“All teams, Grassland. Do not engage, hold positions. In 300 seconds, if subjects have not vacated, engage at will. 300 seconds, mark.”\n\nAt once, Hunter started a timer on his watch, and then looked back at the scene unfolding down on the road. 5 minutes seemed like well enough time, but then again, these guys seemed to be taking their time with this rape/execution/whatever, playing up to the camera and showing off how tough they were.\n\nOne minute passed, and they had scarcely moved. It was clear now that someone, the guy with the knife who had stripped the young woman nude, was narrating something at the camera, for the benefit of some presumed audience later.\n\nTwo minutes, and finally something happened. All the men repositioned themselves slightly, and the camera guy scooted closer by several feet. The narrator stood directly behind the snow leopard, raised the knife above his head, and then brought it down to her throat while he pulled her head back with his other hand, stretching her neck taut.\n\nHunter’s magnification level was regrettably enough to see what happened next in full detail. The girl’s skin and fur split wide the second the blade passed over and through them, spilling blood all over the beautiful fur of her front, staining her breasts, heading down to more private places…\n\nHunter’s finger strayed toward the trigger, and he realized he had the chest of the knife-man in his crosshairs. His finger twitched, wanting badly to take the shot, but he knew he couldn’t. Not even 2 and a half minutes had passed. Not to mention, the girl was already done for. She squirmed, kicked out and writhed in desperate panic and attempted to avoid her death, but it didn’t stop the knife from slashing at her neck again and again, flaying her throat open to the bone, and then continuing.\n\nHer movements became far less pronounced as her neck squirted and spilled her blood all over herself and the dirt of the road. She fell forward, but was still being held up by her head as she bled freely like a slaughtered pig. The knife wielder was cutting through her spine now, as it desperately tried to hold her in one piece, but it separated under his intense hacking, and she fell completely limp as only a small amount of skin and fur held her head on, and that only lasted a second more.\n\nThen her head was completely removed from her shoulders, and her body fell onto its front in the dirt, squirting the last of her lifeforce onto the road. Three minutes gone. Now her head was being shown up close to the camera, and Hunter could see that her eyes were dull, but still appearing to move a bit, while her mouth hung open in dumb surprise.\n\nAfter some more theatrics from her killers, during which her head was placed on the middle of her own back, and some of the men posed for pictures while grabbing her ample butt, squeezing it and pretending to hump her. One of them decided that wasn’t quite enough, for he whipped his dick out, hard as a rock, and knelt over her rear, pulling her cheeks apart and pushing himself into her while her corpse just laid there and took it.\n\n“Grassland, Echo-4,” Hunter hissed in deep frustration as the 4 minute mark passed. “Permission to engage, subjects fucking dead body now.”\n\n“All teams, Grassland,” came the prompt response. “Engage at will. Echo-1, Echo-2, move bodies from the road once complete. Echo-3, move truck to a safe location.”\n\nThat was all Hunter needed to hear. Not waiting for his spotter, who immediately began calling out wind adjustments, he took aim at the heart of the man currently violating the young woman’s ass, and fired.\n\nHis shot was a little off target, striking the man in the gut just above his pelvis, and a little to the right of center. Making a swift elevation and slight windage adjustment, he once again looked through the scope. Other teams had opened fire now, and bodies were falling all over the place as the grunts looked around in horrified confusion. The one Hunter hit was now writhing on his side, holding his wound, while his dick was still out.\n\nSo Hunter’s next shot removed the exposed cock from his body, and then a swift follow up shot put him down for good. Now satisfied, he listened to his spotter describe a target hiding behind the rear left wheel of the truck, and found none other than the knife-man himself cowering there. The other teams didn’t apparently have a good shot at him, so this would be a double-helping of vengeance on behalf of that poor woman.\n\nActually, as Hunter leveled his crosshairs at the head of the man, he wondered why he felt this way. He’d seen innocent people die before. He didn’t even know if the leopard was innocent. Why was he so hot and bothered over this woman he saw from a distance, and never met?\n\nIt didn’t matter why, he decided, and put a neat hole in the temple of the leopard’s killer. He flopped forward, bleeding heavily out of the side of his head, and it occurred to Hunter that he’d gotten off far easier than his beheaded victim had. At least, no one would rape his corpse.\n\nThe remaining militants tried to fire back blindly, but didn’t come close to hitting anything. The hail of gunfire from all 6 teams lasted only seconds, and then the dust settled on a grim scene. 7 bodies, strewn about, blood soaking into the road. Once radio chatter confirmed that no targets remained alive, Echoes 1-3 emerged from the tall grasses down below and set about to quickly drag all evidence of what just happened from the road, as not to spook the main target.\n\nThen the truck was moved, and finally the beheaded leopard and her discarded clothing. One of the guys grabbed her head and chucked it as far as he could into the grass while the other dragged her by her arms into the brush. Then all that remained was some blood on the road, and the team members dealt with that by kicking loose dirt and gravel over it, to give the rough appearance that nothing had transpired at all. In fact, once everyone was back in place, everything looked just as it had before. The grass was so tall as to hide all the bodies, and even the truck with damn effectiveness.\n\nSo now, focus could return to the main objective.\n\n“All teams, Grassland,” said the radio. “Fall back to position Delta. Target has been seen fleeing toward the border.”\n\nHunter sighed, closing his eyes."
}