Deepest Dive: The Wamai Story

"Born to a fishing family on the coast of Kenya, Furaha spent his childhood hunting sharks and collecting lost treasures from the ocean floor of the Lamu Archipelago."

Moments of pure euphoria enter my mind as I travel deeper and deeper into the ocean floor. All of the stressful memories of fieldwork that I'd spent combating others in gunfights faded away for the time being. As I prepared for the days ahead, I kept replaying in my mind the recurring thought of accepting a particular challenge I had recently faced.

On my thirteenth birthday, my village was burned down by members of a guerrilla faction that was at war with the African government. My older sister and mother were killed when my village was attacked and burned down.

I owed it to my family to one day avenge my bloodline. My first step would be to learn how to handle weapons better than the best death squad member of the African militia. My house had vanished, buried beneath the ash and bone rubble.

My tears dried to a salty substance, and the innocence I once held in my heart was lost forever. When I began to feel myself slipping from God's grace, the sea took me in. Deep sea training and meditation helped calm my nerves before performing in combat while assigned to the Rainbow Six squadron for a little more than a decade.

The humming giant sperm whales echoed throughout the ocean as I exited my meditation as I gathered myself from the subconscious of my own fears and aspirations. The longer one remains submerged in water, the clearer one can become in Mother Nature's womb.

I managed to become a successful shooter in the militia formed for war orphans after being left to fend for myself years later. On the morning of my seventeenth birthday, a military recruiter from the United States of America arrived at the militia that had provided me with shelter, and salvation came in the form of paperwork. Over his right eye, the military recruiter wore a leather eye-patch.

His solemn portuguese demeanor complemented the customized crossbow, which had been designed with a metallic origami-like form and strapped to his broad frame like a medieval hunter-gatherer. I later learned that the unit's ominous recruiter wanted to draft me into was known as Rainbow Six after leaving his briefing document on the table in my room.

The thought of leaving my country and starting over entered my mind more deeply after seeing the eye-patched Brazilian recruiter. All those years ago, thoughts of joining this unit, team, or whatever disguised operation began to circulate. Despite this, I've come a long way in my career since joining every and every moment since then.

Time has never felt slower in my life than that night in the burning village all those years ago. To cope with it, I now recall my first mission every time I go deep sea meditating. My mission, while far from simple, was relatively straightforward: infiltrate a submarine in danger of a nuclear reactor meltdown and then flee in a chopper.

My specialized projectile destroyer known as the Mag-Net weapon assisted me beyond belief during Operation: Shifting Tides, with my AUG A2 in hand and a P12 for a sidearm. Before I was sent in alone on this mission, the Rainbow Six Team's main Operator Tech Specialist designed a total of six objects known as the Mag-Net, each of which can only grab one projectile and is destroyed before that projectile explodes.

In Africa, Operation: Shifting Tides carried a lot of political weight. In Congo Harbor, the African Terrorist Militia hijacked and rigged a submarine with the intent of causing a nuclear meltdown, and my mission was to be dropped onboard and land outside the submarine's exterior to avert disaster.

As I readied my weapon, I noticed two soldiers emerge from the smokescreen ahead. I was able to take them out in the smoke before they even emerged. Unbeknownst to the enemy, the thermal vision I was equipped with proved useful in this situation.

I was instructed via ear-com radio to defuse a thermite charge and enter the submarine's structure after dispatching the two soldiers. I managed to stabilize the reactor and proceed to the escape route after navigating several maze-like floors littered with enemies. After climbing a ladder and returning to the submarine's exterior, I was attacked by a large force of soldiers rappelling in from helicopters using smoke grenades.

Because of my specialized Mag-Net projectiles, I was able to see the completion of my mission by holding off on the submarine until a helicopter arrived to evacuate. Thank the Sea that I had my thermal vision at the time of the mission.

Copyright © 2022 LUiS Thompson