DUST

Ours was a top-military strike team; super secretive in identity. Our mission, however, was known the world over; to strike down a vindictive and deadly terrorist network. Our best chance at success, as promised to us by one of our international communications and intelligence officers, was a desert strike over the Sahara. They could even deliver us the coordinates over a computer network; however unsecure the sending computer was.

Had I known back then what I know now, I would have anticipated the trap. However, I was too proud to think clearly and expect an ambush. I had heard a golden opportunity to finish our team's mission in one strike and I was ready to go for it. I could see the sights of my civilian life with a wife and kid in front of me once more; and only one last mission stood in the way!

My team consisted of our best and brightest: Sarah O'Connor (Intelligence Officer), PFC. Raymond Crawford (Ranger), Cadet Langston Bradshaw (Survival Strategist, specializing in Desert Warfare), Colonel Alfonso Gutierrez (Pilot), and myself, Lieutenant Mitchell MacArthur, expedition team leader. This was going to be it; the mission that ended the threat of our world's deadliest terrorist cabal!

Our best copter was tested, fueled, loaded, and ready to go. There would be no turning back now. We weren't trained to want to look back until the war was over. We all naturally missed our families and friends back home. However, it was understood that going home before the mission was over could put many lives at risk of retaliation; not the least threat of which being to our own loved ones. The enemy knew our identities; it would only be a matter of time before they knew our loved ones too; especially if we returned to our normal lives while the terrorists were still operating.

We lifted off the morning of July 25, 2026. One last strike was it; a years long mission now could be put to rest! I had a wife to get home to and a son who barely knew me yet and I wanted to be present to help raise him. Alfonso and Sarah wanted to finally set a wedding date once they could return to their civilian lives. Raymond Crawford had a fiancee of his own back home and wanted to return to college for a few Adult Gen Ed courses to fullfil his Bachelor's. Langston wanted to get home to his ailing mother and the possibility of resalvaging a relationship with an absentee father on the chance that his mother wouldn't make it. Since the rise of the Globabl Terrorist Network, these had all been fever dreams to us. They wouldn't be for much longer.

All was quiet for the flight out of the concealed U.S. military base to out over the Sahara. We all knew the reason for the silence across our team. Of course, we all wanted to make it home. However, it also finally washed over us just how simple the end of the war really sounded. The multinational enemy military network had built itself up in private for AGES before we had even FORMED our counter-strike operation and had launched attack after attack on innocents for years. So much blood had been shed from both sides already. Yet, we were to believe that THIS would be the end of the war...?

There was only a brief moment when the warning of an oncoming missile pinged on the helicarrier's instruments. The cloaking technology that the enemies had used on their missiles had been a success; that single missile only registered on our equipment for maybe two seconds before impact. Our mission was ended in a giant fireball and the enemies could operate for another day...

Betrayal. Our team, our nation, and good and decent people worldwide had been betrayed by our communications officer in return for blood money and safeharbor until he should return home to his family with the "promise" that they not be threatened. Trapped over the desert in a giant fireball. That had been the fate of my team and myself as we lost our supplies. Lost in enemy territory; that was my fate now...

My crew was nowhere to be found around me; they were likely dead. Our weapons, let alone our medical supplies and rations, were of course destroyed. The enemy was in hiding now that their celebration over such an easy victory was over. They wouldn't hide for long; they had to be scheming.

Our mission had been a trap that ended in failure. My team was gone and I was alone. It was every miracle that I was still here at all and I can't begin to explain it. I wish it were not so that I was still here in my failure and the harm that I had led my team in to. I had taken my eyes off of the reality of the situation of war for only a moment; and the moment was gone. My own dreams of returning home and dreams of my team to ever return were dashed before my eyes in a new reality. My team was gone; and engulfed in the desert's parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind...