He felt like he was sitting on a ship that was speeding towards unknown seas, and the helm wasn't quite in his hands.
At the same time, Eastern Mine Area of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Night, no moon.
Captain Gals and his eight-man squad moved like phantoms through the dense tropical rainforest. They wore adapted ghillie suits, their faces painted, equipped with silenced assault rifles, thermal imagers, and mini drones.
No markings, weapons were a mix of Eastern Europe and North America make, untraceable.
For the past 48 hours, they had been tracking the movements of "Skull and Snake" in the area like patient hunters.
Informants provided several possible locations. They ruled out two, but the third, hidden beside a dried-up riverbed in a rock cave, felt wrong.
The squad settled in on the high ground about three hundred meters from the cave. The drone silently ascended, flying beneath the canopy and transmitting thermal images back to Gals' tactical tablet.
