AUGUST 22nd, 1996 - Rainbow HQ (Zaire) - One week after the events of the Dam.
Sledge was in the bunks.
He finished packing the belongings of Mute, including Mute's dogtag, which he held closely to his chest.
He noticed Buck walk in behind him, and turned around sharply, eyeing the French-Canadian.
"This mission in Zaire. Is it really worth it? Losing this much?"
Buck almost pushed past Sledge's concerns about loss, acting dismissively.
"This is our assignment...Seamus. We've all lost somebody..."
Although it was hurting him more than it should.
"I know you thought Frost messed up. But it was tough out there. Give her a break."
Sledge stepped forward to Buck dangerously, setting Mute's dog tag down on the nightstand next to him.
He folded his arms and spoke methodically.
"Frost cant even be present to face what she lost. Listen to me...Seb...this mission in Zaire...our counter terrorism...it only matters to the degree in which her leadership doesn't drag the rest of us down."
Buck replied with anger.
"You going to go there, man? We tried everything out there! Whoever that was--Who killed Chandler--Also killed many more! This wasn't just your loss and it certainly wasn't the fault of our leadership. We all lost somebody. And we all pay the price. Do you understand me?!"
Not only was Buck angry about the mission, but angry that Sledge was going below the belt with his accusations.
The room inside, besides Sledge and Buck of course, wasn't much better.
There were multiple people arguing, whether it be over Frost's leadership, or why they were even there to begin with.
Finally, Frost creaked open the door to the base, a deafening silence washed over the room like a tsunami.
Everyone fell silent and simply stared at the woman. Some with rage, some with compassion, some with disappointment.
She hesitated on speaking, wearing her scars like a huge sign, a tear fell under her working eye, she looked up to the entire team, or at least whom was present in the same room.
"It has been a little while.. hasn't it, team?"
"What are you doing here? — have you come to kill the rest of us?! You wanna send what's left on a suicide mission?"
Fenrir stood up upon her words, his fists clenched, he had one goal in mind now - revenge. Revenge upon a woman he once shared intimate moments with, revenge upon the woman whom had a hand in the death of his best friend - Dokkabei to be exact.
Bandit quickly joined behind Fenrir, crossing his arms angrily.
"Monika died in that dam. We never recovered a body! How can I live with that?! FROST! WHAT DO WE DO?!"
"Okay, Everybody --" Buck winced as voices grew louder. Some aggressive towards Frost, some attempting to peacemake. Buck interrupted with a louder voice, more loud than he normally spoke. "EVERYONE CALM DOWN! WE CAN WORK THROUGH THIS! THATS WHAT WE DO!"
"Yeah mate? How exactly do you plan on doing that? We've lost enough people. I am not going on a mission for Frost."
Sledge stepped forward, aiming to get towards Frost at the doorway but held back by Pulse and Warden respectively.
"I can't support a leader I can't trust, sorry Tina. I agree with the boys here…" Zero stood by Fenrir, his arms crossed, he did step back, but not out of respect for Frost. He was too old and too smart to be infighting.
"Listen to Buck! Us fighting will serve no good in this land! We're already outnumbered and outgunned, don't make it any worse!" Doc stood by Buck, his eyes set on Sledge, in case he tried anything stupid.
He was a doctor, sure, he treated all of these men, but now it was time to hurt them if necessary.
"Taina, you know better than that… don't try it."
Warden stood by Frost, his eyes set on Caveira, whom attempted to sneak up on Frost, frozen in her spot by the door.
"If you wanna abandon rainbow's core values you can go and work with the ZLF! We have no room for traitors and cowards!"
Ela appeared from another room deeper in the base, her eyes were set for Fenrir, her hands clenched too.
There was a moment of silence. Peace, almost.
Serenity.
Then Sledge's fist connected with Buck's jaw and the room came apart.
Buck crashed into the equipment table behind him, scattering gear across the concrete floor. The impact gave everyone else half a second to register what was happening — half a second too long.
Pulse was closest. He drove his elbow into Sledge's stomach, forcing the big man back a step. Before he could follow up, Bandit came from Pulse's left flank and drove a shoulder into his ribs, sending both of them sprawling into the far wall.
Across the room the door to the adjacent corridor was still open. Through it, Warden and Caveira had spilled into the narrow hallway — grappling, neither gaining clean control, both using the walls for leverage. Their struggle was its own contained chaos, separate from the main room but audible to everyone in it.
Back near the center table, Doc had read the situation the moment Sledge threw the first punch. He'd moved quietly to the left side of the room while attention was on Pulse and Bandit, working around the edge of the space with a tranquilizer needle already prepared in his right hand. He closed the distance to Sledge from behind, reaching for the man's neck.
Meanwhile Fenrir had stopped being rational entirely.
He vaulted the overturned couch near the south wall, clearing dropped equipment in one stride, and launched himself directly at Frost who was braced against the doorframe to the corridor. Zero read the trajectory before Fenrir was halfway across the room and pivoted to intercept — one clean kick to the side of Fenrir's head that redirected his momentum completely, sending him crashing to the floor three feet short of Frost with a impact that shook the room.
Ela was on him before he stopped moving. She dropped into a headlock from behind, locking her forearm across his throat. Fenrir immediately drove backwards, trying to use his body weight to crush her against the wall behind them. She held the lock but her back hit concrete hard and she grunted through her teeth.
Buck had one objective.
He ignored the taste of blood in his mouth and the looseness in his jaw and moved along the right wall toward Frost, staying low, using the chaos as cover. He reached her and got an arm around her waist.
"I got you. We're getting out of here."
He began moving her toward the corridor door.
Sledge caught it in his peripheral — Buck and Frost moving for the exit — at the exact moment Doc reached for his neck. Without turning fully, Sledge's hand shot back and knocked the needle cleanly from Doc's grip, sending it skittering across the floor. He planted a palm on the doctor's chest and drove him backward into the wall hard enough to put a crack in the plaster, then turned and went after Frost.
Buck had gotten her twelve feet down the dimly lit corridor before Sledge came through the door.
The first strike caught Buck across the shoulder and spun him into the wall. He came back off it swinging, catching Sledge across the chin, buying a second. Sledge absorbed it and kept moving. Buck threw himself in front of Frost again and Sledge drove him backward, one hand on his collar, and pinned him against the wall with his forearm across his throat.
Once a loveable brute. Now just a brute.
Mute's death had done something irreversible to Seamus Cowden. The guilt had curdled into something uglier and it had found a target — Frost, who gave the order, who sent them, who came back when half of them didn't. The logic wasn't rational. It didn't need to be.
He was going to beat them both to death and he wasn't going to stop until someone made him.
Frost made him look at her.
"Didn't think you were ever gonna become this pathetic, Seamus."
He turned. She was in a fighting stance against the corridor wall — one good arm, one good leg, everything else held together by stubbornness and rage. As he advanced she wound back and threw everything she had left into one punch, her entire damaged body rotating behind it, fist connecting with his cheek hard enough to send her forward and down onto the floor. She hit the concrete and every broken thing in her body announced itself simultaneously. She grunted and tried to get her eyes back on him.
Sledge clutched his cheek. Picked up his sledgehammer from where it had fallen. Spun it once and turned toward Buck who was still on the floor trying to recollect himself.
He raised it.
A single gunshot from the direction of the front entrance stopped him completely.
The sledgehammer didn't fall. Sledge's hand went to his chest. He looked down at it. Couldn't fully process the information his body was sending him.
Eight more shots came in quick succession, each one driving him back a half step until there were no more steps to take.
The sledgehammer hit the floor first. A loud clean clunk against concrete.
Then Sledge followed it down.
"Down boy, it's nap time."
Citadel Security Operative Kolinski Petrov's rifle barrel let out a soft smoke, rising rapidly into the air and then slowly fading out as he pointed his rifle toward Frost and Buck, then putting it down to his waist, turning his head left to Victor Wolfe, nodding to the two operatives.
"You get these two, AG doesn't like when one man has all the fun."
He stepped back immediately after, grabbing Sledge off the floor by his armour plate's strap and throwing his corpse onto the hard floor, kicking him over and whipping out a polaroid camera, snapping a photo of Seamus' lifeless corpse and developing it, of course, whilst wolfe was deciding who to kill first.
Wolfe chuckled and went to shoot Frost in the head first, but before he could do so, gunfire began coming his and Kolinski's way from the corridor where the R6 fighters were infighting, forcing Wolfe to cover. "They're making a big fuckin' mistake! Lets get them!"
Multiple CSA soldiers arrived right behind Wolfe and Kolinski as a support squad, moving surgically through the window and into the corridor. Shooting lights out and throwing smokes to cause chaos in the tight space.
Using the chaos and unfortunate circumstances to his advantage, a motivated Buck weakly lifted himself off the ground, picked up a wounded Frost, and began hobbling to cover, just as the R6 operators were shooting through the hall at the CSA.
Kolinski ducked into cover.
He wasn't paying much attention to Buck and Frost because they seemed like lost causes to him, as he fired back into the HQ.
"Leave me here… this is what i deserve." Frost tried to resist Buck's picking up, but she was far too weak to, and eventually gave into being saved, despite her best wishes.
"Rainbow… our leader's out there, we gotta eliminate the threat together, and pull this team out the dirt. — Pulse, your cardiac still work?" Warden pressed himself against a few sheets of cover, random trays and metallic pieces shoved into the wall.
"Roger. Cardiac sensor deployed." Pulse managed to make his way to the wall in which Wolfe, Kolinski and the CSA squad were on the other side. He then activated the cardiac sensor, detecting 8 heartbeats in the immediete vicinity. "8 tangos. We can take 'em."
"Little pig little pig...Let...me...IN!" Wolfe started shooting through the wall manically, aiming to get an operative with a stray bullet.
To Victor's surprise, he nailed Bandit in the leg with one of the shots.
Upon hearing the German's grunt of pain, Wolfe focused fire through the wall, hitting Bandit two more times in the chest, killing him. The CSA operatives advanced through the smoke they had deployed, zeroing in on the room.
"This is it… Bosak, plant mines around the exterior entrance, Doc, standby to prepare medicine. I'll grab something to even the odds." Warden slung his rifle to his side, stomping off into the smoke, retrieving a shield from another room, donning it over himself, sticking an arm out the side with his pistol pointed forward, waiting for any enemy to approach.
Ela began sticking her concussion mines wherever she could, around furniture and back entrances, narrowly avoiding CSA presence as she made it back to the living room, equipping her main rifle and pointing it towards Victors voice.
"That's another mutt put to sleep." Kolinski extracted Bandits body, throwing it outside with Sledges as he continued through with Wolfe, kicking down any door in his path, reaching the end of the smoke which connected to the main room.
"We're both 1 kill up. Whoever gets more takes home the bigger bonus." Wolfe assisted the CSA's as they breached the room where majority of the R6'ers were.
He peeped the laser coming from the living room, methodically making his way over towards the corner of the corridor to ambush Ela.
After watching Bandit die and the CSA operatives heartbeats move forward towards the door to get breached. Pulse cocked back his shotgun and just managed to squeeze out a shot before a flashbang rolled in, forcing him to fall back behind a desk. Luckily, Ela's concussion mine stunned one of the operatives, forcing them back temporarily.
Meanwhile, Buck got Frost to the infirmary. "We're under attack...Tina...its those same guys from the dam. Its gotta be....-- They're smarter...they're quicker...they're more lethal...I..--" Buck just managed to sit frost on the gurney before falling backwards in a state of temporary shock, guilt, and sadness. "Fucking...Seamus is dead...Rainbow is falling apart..."
"It isn't them. it can't be." Frost moaned and groaned her way into sitting up, clutching at her belly, as that was what absorbed most impact from the dam incident, and thus hurt the most under pressure.
She hobbled up, on her one working leg, falling back to her knees again, crawling over to Buck.
"This is my fault, don't blame yourself… you're gonna get Rainbow Six back on its feet after this, panic about its future after you kill the loons after us."
"No…Tina, you have to come with me. With us. We can make up for the past…Last week at the dam…We can make things right." Buck shakily aimed his pistol at the door in a protective stance toward Frost.
Meanwhile, Wolfe continues to stalk the operative with the noticable laser sight, Ela. Once her barrel stuck out from the living room, Wolfe hugged the wall, and made his move.
Once close enough, Wolfe grabbed the barrel, and ducked underneath the panicked shots of Ela.
He then yelled as he ran her into the wall, crushing her throat in the impact of the stock of her gun. To confirm the kill, Wolfe stabbed her gently in the head. Moments later, Wolfe took a polaroid with the camera, before returning to his squad.
Kolinski cleared the living room, not a rainbow operator in sight, neither in the hallways, it was room clearing time. Kolinski nodded toward the infirmary door, waiting for Victor to support him… meanwhile all surviving rainbow ops had moved outside, awaiting an opportunity to strike a deal.
"Wait! Do not kill us! We want to join you!" Fenrir emerged first, his teammates were all still hidden, his hands up as he slowly arose out of their hiding spot.
Pulse remained concealed with Warden in the hiding spot, confused at this sudden revelation, as he was not informed. Pulse looked to Warden, then looked at their escape routes. The two men stood up and made a play for the back door.
Inside the infirmary, Buck noted the voices outside the door, not shocked at Fenrir's betrayl but continued to be saddened at how quickly this team is falling apart. Without second thought,
Buck holsted Frost up, helping her up on wobbly feet. He put one of her arms over his shoulder and walked to the window, setting her down gently. He made his way back to the door, took a medical cart and pushed it against the doorway to prevent someone breaking in.
He then shattered the glass with the stock of his gun, picked Frost back up, and climbing out first, taking her with him once he was out safely.
---
"Stay here with this buffoon."
Kolinski ordered Wolfe to stay with Fenrir.
He then followed the sound to the outside area, he found the door had closed itself, and had been blocked off by the ensuing pulse, but he couldn't open it. Infuriated but determined, he returned to the living room soon after.
"Congratulations on a job well done. Boss will be happy. Men, secure the compound. Kolinski and I will handle these boys." Victor turned to Fenrir and Doc who held their hands up in surrender, keeping his gun trained, referring to Kolinski by code name, "Overlord, I got 'em covered. Start asking questions."
"No, this is your victory."
"Roger. A'ight...In my experience, operators surrender for three reasons." Wolfe held up fingers, "One, they're injured. Two, their teams gone. Three, they genuinely believe they're worth more alive and working than dead and forgotten." Wolfe walked over, completing circles around the two surrendering ops."The first two get a bullet. The third reason is at least worth a conversation. So which one is it, boys?"
"We'll tell you everything and everything you wanna know! We'll work for you as much as you want sir!" Fenrir still held his hands up, his face showing timidness, but a smirk hid behind that.
"You chose right. Men, load 'em up!" Victor walked off, Kolinski following behind, as CSA soldiers surrounded the two surrendering operatives.
"What a spineless bastard." Frost groaned out through her gritted teeth, being carried by Buck, she appreciated his help, even if she longed to atone for the dam.
Meanwhile, Zero and Caveira both fled their seperate ways.