Back in Action-Sort of...

Greetings again. I am glad to be back in my little apartment and to have a chance to renew my posting here in this blog.

I have had a very rough week. After the raid I described in my last post, we returned to our basecamp at an old firefighting campsite in the woods not too far from the actual location of the raid. Things seemed to be going OK at first, when I wrote that last post. However, all Hell broke loose when some of the prisoners who had been hurt in the action found a way to take some of the medical people and their guards captive in the makeshift MedTent. Unfortunately, things didn't go as smooth in taking back control of the situation, as they had in the raid. Abu Majid led the prisoners in taking the hostages, and somehow got ahold of a grenade while one of the others had gotten some sidearms.

The immediate reaction was to try to negotiate with Majid, but he was having none of that, he kept increasing his demands from freeing all of his people to outrageous sums of money and weapons, he knew that none of these demands could be granted. After several hours of a stand-off situation, I was tasked with leading the assault team. It was my assignment to find a way of getting to that grenade and neutralizing it at all costs.

My memories of the assault are actually less than clear, since I did succeed in getting to that grenade. When we rushed into the tent, we were immediately accompanied by a couple of extremely loud sonic blasts that were intended to throw the hostage takers off balance, our guys had been given special ear plugs and a warning of when it would come. The blasts did succeed in their stated goal, as Majid was holding the grenade when I burst through the door, but dropped it just as he was getting ready to throw it at me when the sonic blasts occurred. He recovered quickly enough to try to kick the grenade in my direction, but I was already leaping towards it as the SWAT members following behind me started sniping the terrorists still left standing after the blasts. I was able to scoop the grenade in my arms and fall down directly on top of it, like I had read about so many brave soldiers doing in WWII in order to save their comrades. Of course, I cannot accept any such accolades, since I would feel no pain, and would suffer few consequences, or so I thought.

The blast from the grenade did a significant amount of damage to my body, shredding much of the skin I had left, breaking a couple of bones in my chest, and severing a bunch of my neural pathways. Luckily my body was solid enough to absorb enough of the impact that my fellow officers were unharmed. The terrorists were quickly neutralized, and only one of the med techs had been killed (apparently in the initial hostage taking) and two officers slightly wounded.

After this second assault was over, I found I could not walk, and had very limited movement in my right arm. I had to be loaded onto a special stretcher, and flown back to Virginia for the repairs to be undertaken.

The majority of last week was spent in own special repair bay as the techs had to repair my severed neural pathways, patch on some replacement skin, and mend the broken bones. They also spent additional time reinforcing certain weaknesses from blast impacts, in the hope that I can be of even more use in explosive related cases. So the end result is that I am heavier and sturdier than I was before, since they have started the up-armoring process that will make it more difficult for stray bullets or fragments from explosions to damage my body.

Drake was in his glory when he came to see me, he told me receiving 'high honors' for implementing the program that created me, and has been given the green light to recruit, train, and 'raise' more officers like me. I think the government is really looking into whether or not the process that created me can be used to create a special cadre of elite troops to be used in places like Iraq.

Anyway, I have just returned home, and I am still getting used to balancing as I walk and move. I have been given the next week off, pending any crisis that arises, and intend to do some serious blogging over the next few days. I hope to be able to finish the story of how I came to be, and explore some of the issues that are of new importance to me. You will probably be seeing multiple posts a day this weekend, and more frequent entries during the next week.

Well, I need to think back that first meeting with Drake when he broke out some of the details of this program, and I will get into that later this evening.