The U.N.I.T.

Adam stared in disbelief; he watched, in slow motion, as Joe went down, and went down hard, tumbling several feet before lying there, unmoving.

“Cover me!” Adam shouted, and was off like a shot. He threw the MP5 over his shoulder, where it landed on his back due to the strap he had attached to it. In a situation such as this, he still needed to have access to his weapon, but the strap allowed it to not get in his way, while maneuvering.

William heard Adam's shout, and turned to see what was going on; muttering a heartfelt "Shit!" as he pivoted the Black hawk, just enough so that he could open fire with the turret.  William worked on keeping everyone on the left of Joe pinned down, leaving the right side to the other boys. Soon, nothing could be heard but the scream of the turret firing, as he cooked off nearly a thousand rounds in continuous firing. The impact of those rounds chewed up everything it touched in its wake.

In the meantime, Juan was laying down covering fire to Joe's right, in an attempt to keep those soldiers there pinned down, to give Adam time to get to Joe. It was after about the two hundredth round being fired from Juan's .50 cal. that disaster struck, the Damned thing jammed.

“FUCK!!!”  Juan screamed, as he let go of the .50 cal, picking up his MP5 to be joined by Logan. Soon they were both firing, in an attempt to lay down enough cover fire so that Adam could reach Joe to rescue him.

Adam finally had reached Joe and, grabbing him by his shoulder harness, began to pull him towards the helicopter, not having the time to assess his injuries at this point. He had brought the MP5 back around and with his other hand he was aiming it at the enemy, firing with precision, not caring one bit about his previous order not to kill, but only to wound. They had shot Joe, and they could all go straight to hell, for all he cared at this moment. As he reached the helicopter, he gave Joe's body to those waiting, turning and concentrating his fire on the center, while Juan covered the right and William the left. That left Logan who had dropped his weapon, and was pulling Joe into the bird, trying to get him to safety.

As soon as everyone was loaded, William started yelling back to them. “Close those damned doors; we gotta get the fuck outta here.” The boys quickly scrambled to obey, and once they had them closed, William wasted no time in accelerating while climbing away from there at the same time.

Adam quickly gave a look around to make sure everyone was strapped in, only now noticing, with a worried look, that Chang was tending to his father, but he couldn't tell how bad it was. He didn't have time to deal with it right now and pushed his terror, at losing what he had just gained from his mind as he climbed up into the co-pilots seat, alongside William. He took a quick look around to see what the situation was, and noticed that the remaining two Black Hawk helicopters were in hot pursuit. William was still keeping low to the ground, but it was obvious that they were in a bit of trouble.

“Okay boss, your call, City, or mountains?” William said, as he stole a glance over at Adam” Adam shot him a look that said he didn't understand, so William explained “here's the score then... we hit the city, they won't shoot at us. We go into the mountains, they get clear fire, but we might be able to loose them. Your call?”

Adam thought about it for a second, and said “Mountains, I don't want to risk the attention of going through the city.”

William nodded, and said “Well, we gotta go over the city, somewhat, but it won't be bad.” as he pushed the throttle all the way forward, and banked the helicopter into a new direction, and soon they were flying low and fast right towards the mountains. For the next few minutes, William dived, ducked, weaved, and generally did everything he could, to not only lose the two helicopters following him, but to see which ones of his brothers, had strong stomachs. He took a second, when he finally lost the other helicopters, to see how everyone else was taking the little stunt show.

Adam, for his part, was fine, Jory and Juan were grinning like the little kids they were. Chang, the kid with the cat, and Joe looked a little green. Finally, when he was sure they were okay, William spoke up. “Okay, it looks like we lost 'em, so now where do we go?”

Adam asked, "Are we really clear of them?" to which William responded, "Oh yeah, they can't keep up with me," with a big shit eating grin on his face.

Adam breathed a sigh of relief, which was quickly replaced with one of shock and concern, as he heard Joe speak up, from the back.

Before Joe could say whatever it was that he wanted to, Adam was up and out of the co-pilots seat, crying, "DADDY!!" as he launched himself back to his father and was soon followed by Juan and Logan.

As all three came crashing down alongside Joe, he sought to quickly reassure them.

"Easy guys, it's just a small wound in my leg."

"You sure you're okay?" Juan asked suspiciously, his voice mixed with worry and fear, which was echoed by his brothers asking, "Yeah are ya sure?"

"Jeez guys, it's just a scratch." Chang said disgustedly, as all three boys turned and glared at him.

"Hey, he's right now, I'm okay, really I am." Joe said, which brought the boys' attention back to him now, and with that pronouncement, he found three boys on top of him crying and hugging him for all they were worth, as he felt tears running down his cheeks at realizing how much they did care about him.

"Hey, guys, I hate to break this up and all, but we can't fly around up here all night ya know." William called back.

Joe spoke up at that point; “Give me a sec, I know a place. Umm... start heading north; I'll let you know in a sec.”

Joe grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket, and dialed a number. No one could hear what he was saying over the sound of the helicopter, but after a few minutes on the phone, he shut it and looked up at Adam.

“Okay Adam, the place I know of is an old abandoned gold mine. I actually own it, but I've never been there before. From what little I do know of it, there should be enough room to hide this thing, in one of the caves, and there are still some buildings there too. I'm not sure what shape they are in, but I guess we'll find out when we get there. I just spoke to Janet, and she'll meet us there.

Adam nodded, and got the directions on how to get there. After he relayed them to Will, he spun around in his seat, and looked to the strange boy that was holding onto that monster of a cat. He had to just look at them for a minute, it just looked so wrong. Here you had a young kid, maybe seven or eight years old, quietly talking to, and petting this mammoth jaguar, which incidentally seemed to be named Fluffy. Fluffy simply did not fit what this cat looked like. Adam had never seen a jaguar up close, but he had studied them, like he had most large prey animals. From what he knew, Jaguars were large cats, but not this large. “Fluffy” had to weigh in at somewhere between three hundred fifty, and four hundred pounds. He was easily seven foot long, without the tail. Sitting there on the deck of the helicopter, you couldn't see the kid behind him. Adam locked eyes with the cat, and he just couldn't shake the feeling that the cat was a lot smarter then he should be.

Adam finally just shook his head to stop staring at the cat, and looked behind him at the boy. “Hey there little guy, I know you're probably scared, but everything's gonna be okay now.”

The kid looked back at Adam and said, almost in a shout, so he could be heard over the sound of the engines.  “I'm not scared; Fluffy said you guys are okay, and anyways, I got Fluffy to protect me.” As he leaned forward and hugged the big cat.  Adam watched in disbelief, as Fluffy actually started to purr. Of course, a purr from that monster was almost as deep of a rumble as the engine of the helicopter.

“Okay,” Adam, shaking his head, began, still totally confused about the kid and his cat. “What's your name then, Tarzan?” The boy just gave him a confused look.

“My name's not Tarzan, silly, my name's Tommy. And I ain't no little guy, I'm eight years old.” Tommy stated in such a way that only an indignant child could pull off.

Adam chuckled at that, and then went around introducing everyone else. “Well, Tommy, as you know, I'm Adam, I'm thirteen, and the commander of The U.N.I.T. Sitting next to you, with the long blond hair, is Logan, he's also thirteen. Logan is the Unit's Intelligence officer.”

This got a few looks from the other boys, who just met him, but Adam quickly filled them in on Logan through the telepathic link. “The little guy next to you on the other side is Juan, he's nine. He's the Unit's Sniper, and heavy gunner, which means he gets to play with all the big toys.” Juan grinned a mile wide at that, and patted the M60 that was next to him.

“Across from you is Joris, or Jory, as he likes to be called. He's also nine years old.” Adam continued, indicating the slightly large kid sitting next to the door. Jory smiled widely, which just showed off his platinum blond hair and green eyes even more. “Jory is our resident “Blow-Shit-Up” artist. In other words, he's the guy that likes to play with bombs.”

“Chang is the eleven year old sitting next to Jory. He's the doctor of our group. He's also, if I have my information right, trained as a full Samurai.” Chang looked over at Tommy, and half bowed.

“The old guy next to me, who happens to be bleeding all over the place,” Adam couldn't help but chuckle which got him an elbow in the side from Joe that made everyone else laugh too. “Okay, let me rephrase that, the old MEAN guy next to me, is Joe. He's kinda like the father of our group.”

Joe decided to save what little dignity he had left, by cutting in. “First off, I'm not old. Second, don't listen to anything Adam says, I think the doctors forgot to put his brain back in, at some point.” This got everyone to laugh, while Adam shoved Joe a bit, for that comment.

With a put upon sigh, Adam looked back over to Tommy, who had a smile on his face, and was giggling a bit at the madness around him. “Lastly, but certainly in no way least, we have Will. He's the guy that's flying this hunk of steal. As you probably guessed, he's the pilot, but he's also the electronics expert. He's eleven too.”

William waved over his shoulder back to Tommy and grinned, as he shouted back. “Hey Tommy, it's cool to meet you. Can you do me a favor and make sure Fluffy there doesn't get hungry, and decide that I look tasty.”

Tommy laughed out loud at that, and shouted back up to William.

“Don't worry, Will. Fluffy don't eat no one I don't tell him to. Besides, he says you'd probably taste really bad.”

At the hurt look on Will's face, Tommy was almost falling over with the fit of giggles which had overtaken his body.

“Excuse me. I think I taste rather good, thank you.” Will said, as he pretended to take a bite of his arm. Of course, this made everyone crack up, along with Tommy.

Joe couldn't help but laugh, himself, at the antics going on. “You know it's kinda hard to believe that you guys are as deadly as you are, when you act like this.”

Adam just grinned and was about to make some type of smart assed remark, but Joe continued, not giving him time. “By the way, what's this U.N.I.T thing? I didn't know they had an actual name for you.”

“They didn't, but you can thank Juan for coming up with it. I think it sounds pretty cool. It stands for Universal Next-Generation Infiltration Team.” Adam said proudly. Joe was about to comment, when William spoke up.

“Okay guys, I think we're getting close.”

Everyone started looking out the windows to see what was out there.

What they saw was a large Box style canyon, with huge shear cliffs on three sides. The fourth side was comprised of a rather small and narrow entrance.

Adam noticed right away that the only way for anyone to get into this canyon was either by air, or by that small opening.

He immediately liked what he saw.

“Okay Will, why don't you circle the canyon once, I wanna see what the rest of this looks like, although I like what I see so far.”

William did as instructed, and the more Adam saw, the better he liked it.

Inside the canyon, there were four slightly run down buildings, one of which was obviously a bunkhouse for the workers. While two of the others appeared to be supply buildings, and the last one looked like a nice sized office building.

There was also an entrance to a rather large sized cave, and it was easily big enough to hide the helicopter in. Adam told Will to set the chopper down near the entrance to the cave, and Will proceeded to bring it in for a nice soft landing before he started the shutdown sequence.

It was as they were disembarking from the helicopter that Fluffy suddenly let out a low rumble.

Adam immediately started to look around, and what he saw shocked him.

Coming out of one of the buildings were five people, two of them were older, and dressed in military fatigues, probably around their mid fifties, but the other three, however, were in their late teens at the most. The youngest, looked like he couldn't be more then fourteen and Adam could also see that they were all armed.

The older guys were carrying Vietnam era rifles, while the younger guys were holding shotguns, or hunting rifles. Looking about them, Adam also noticed that everyone in his group had the tell tale little red dots on them that indicated laser targeting sights.

This was not at all what he had expected to find here.

The members of the Unit reacted instantly.

Juan grabbed the .50 cal off the chopper, and made himself ready to open up with it.

If the situation were different, Adam might have laughed at what he saw before him.  There was little Juan, holding this huge machine gun. It was obvious why he had his foot planted tight up to the skid of the helicopter, if he had to open up with that thing, he would get pushed back if he wasn't planted against something.  Being what it was though, Adam didn't.

William almost automatically, was back in the cockpit, and was powering up the turret. The rest of the boys had grabbed their respective weapons, and were trying to set up a defensive posture.

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS, AND NO ONE WILL GET HURT.” Came the shouted command from one of the older guys.

The five of them had stopped walking, and were pointing their weapons at the kids.

Adam didn't have much time to calm this situation down.

He started to look around to see what could be done.

What he found, surprised the hell out of him. He kept looking around to see if he could confirm what he saw, as one of the men shouted out.  “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. PUT DOWN YOUR GUNS, AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”

Joe was watching everything nervously, trying to figure a way out of this, but not seeing one when, he noticed Adam looking around, then the other four boys, not including Logan, swung their heads to Adam, before starting to look around themselves. Joe figured Adam was talking with them telepathically, and hoped that he was coming up with a plan, but he was not at all ready for what happened next.

Joe watched in shock and amazement, as Juan, Adam, Chang, and Joris lowered their weapons. He could hear the turret powering down, so he knew that Will was doing the same, on his end.  The biggest surprise though happened next, Juan started to snicker a bit, followed by Joris, and soon Adam was joining them in full-blown laughter. William, not to be outdone stumbled out of the helicopter almost falling over because he was laughing so hard.

Joe saw that everyone had stopped, and were staring at the boys in shock as they were lost in uncontrollable laughter.

Finally, Adam started to get himself together, and looked back over to the older guys. “Awwww... that's great.” he laughed a bit more. “I gotta remember that one.”

And with that, all five of them lost it again.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT, KID?!?!” The old guy shouted as he moved a bit closer. Obviously, he was not pleased at what was going on, and watching the boys laugh hysterically was just pissing him off that much more.

Adam finally regained his composure again, stood up straight, and looked at the old guy. “You know, I gotta give you credit. If someone didn't know better, you could have pulled it off.”

This really upset the guy, and for the first time, he lowered his rifle off his shoulder and pointed it at Adam. “What are you talking about kid?”

Adam had fully regained his composure by this point, and set his MP5 on the ground. He then motioned for Joe to do the same. When Joe's weapon was on the ground, Adam started walking towards the older guys, with Joe following, hoping he could finally figure out what was going on.

“First off sir, my name is Captain Adam Casey, Commander of this Unit.” Adam started, as he saluted one of the older guys. The two guys looked at each other as Adam held the salute. Finally, one of them returned the salute, and dropped it; Adam dropped his salute as soon as the older guy dropped his.

The older guy looked Adam up and down before he said. “I'm Retired Major Jackson Bryce, Commander of this camp. Please state your business here.”

Adam nodded, and indicated Joe, as he made his introduction. “With me is Retired Capt Joseph Casey, of the Army Rangers. According to our information, he is the rightful owner of this land.” Adam saw the guy turn to look at Joe, with a bit of a worry in his eyes. “However, Major, I must commend you on your tactics. I never would have thought about it.”

By now, Joe was thoroughly confused and decided he was gonna get answers. “Adam, what are you talking about?”

Adam looked at Joe and grinned. “Okay Joe, I know your eyes aren't good enough to see what I did, so I'll just tell you. First off, the only weapons we can see, are the ones these five are carrying. Now, look real close and tell me what’s wrong with them.”

Joe looked from Adam to the Major, who, for his part, started to blush a bit, and that just made Joe even more curious. He started to look intently at the rifles they were carrying, when it finally dawned on him.

Adam giggled, as realization dawned on Joe's face. “Good, you see it too. First off, the two M-16's have very rusted barrels. I doubt they've been fired since Vietnam. Second, you have two hunting rifles, and a pump 12 gauge shotgun. Neither of the rifles are loaded, you can tell that, by the ejection chamber being open. Now, the shotgun is another story. You can't really tell if it's loaded or not.” Adam looked over at the youngest kid there, holding the shotgun. “Now, I don’t mean any offense, but, if you're gonna use a shot gun, it's best to only pump it once. The first time, I thought you were chambering a round, but when you did it the second time, and a shell didn't pop out, I knew it wasn't loaded either.

Joe was just about dumbfounded at what Adam was saying. It was easy to tell from the looks of everyone else, that they were equally impressed. “However,” Adam continued, “the kicker of it all. And the most impressive part, were the laser sights. To someone who doesn't have our senses, they would have appeared just like the ones that are used on weapons. But, to someone who knows what to look for, I could tell that they were only the lasers from the cheap, supermarket brand, laser pointers.” Adam giggled again, as he saw everyone around him with their jaws on the ground.

“Now, Major, we're here to hide out for a bit, and I'm guessing your hiding from something, as well. So why don't we go somewhere, sit down, and talk about this?” The Major looked around, and then over to the younger guys with them. Danny, Kane, Kelly, why don't you go introduce yourselves to the new kids, and show them around.” They nodded, handed their rifles to the older guys, and went off to where the rest of the Unit was hanging out. Once that happened, Joe was astonished to see kids, of all ages and sizes, come out from behind things, and head over to the group. There had to be twenty or thirty kids here.

The major turned around, and started to head back to the main office building, with the other older guy in tow. Joe and Adam quickly followed, and soon all of them were inside.

Logan watched, as the three boys broke off from the older guys, and started to walk over to them. The two older guys, Adam, and Joe were quickly walking into one of the buildings, when Juan whispered over to him.

“Adam says he and Joe are gonna talk to the Major and his friend. Adam also says that we should follow your lead here, so as not to give away too much info.” Logan nodded, and stepped forward to meet the kids walking towards them.

Logan took a second while they were walking up to him to study the three boys. He was able to overhear their names, and he had to admit to a lot of curiosity as to why they were here. Danny, looked to be about sixteen, with brown hair, brown eyes, and rather rough features. He definitely looks like he's been in a few fights in his life. Kane was a bit younger, with jet-black hair, dazzling blue eyes, and rather soft features. Kelly was the youngest of the three, at maybe thirteen or fourteen, and it was very clear that Kelly and Kane were brothers.

“Hey guys.” Logan started, not really knowing what to say. Danny didn't look too happy to be there, but both Kane and Kelly had grins plastered on their faces.

“Hey there, I'm Kelly; this is my brother Kane, and our friend Danny. So you guys gonna hang out here for a bit?” Kelly was definitely way too happy Logan thought.

“Yeah, I guess. But I gotta ask, what are you guys doing here?” Logan asked while trying to figure out what was going on.

“Well, tell you what, I'll tell you my story, if you tell me yours,” Kelly laughed. “I mean, it's gotta be a good one, your what, twelve, thirteen, and your standing there in a military uniform, holding a gun, and flew in on a helicopter. That's a story I gotta know.”

Logan couldn't help but laugh at the kid’s enthusiasm. “Okay, I can live with that. Lead the way, and I'll introduce you to everyone.” With that, they all went off to look around the place.

Logan looked around to the others trying to gauge their reactions, and got nods from the other boys. “Well, I guess I'll start. My name's Logan and I'm thirteen. There's Juan and Jory, they're both nine. And then there's Chang and Will. They're both eleven.

While they were walking around the camp, he continued saying, “We landed here because of Joe owning the place, and we were in a bad salutation and were getting away from the authorities.”

“Does that mean we have to leave here?” Kelly said, with the look of fear and hopelessness in his eyes.

“I don't think so, but we need to wait and see what Adam, Joe and the rest of the adults figure out.” Logan told them, as they continued walking around the camp heading into the cave.

“Okay, now it's your turn. I don't mean to be rude, but it seems funny, that there would be a lot of kids hanging out in an old abandoned gold mine.

Kelly took a deep breath, “well, it's sort of a long story. I can't tell you anyone else's story, just my own.” Logan nodded, and the rest stood around to listen. Their voices seemed to echo off the walls of the cavern that they just walked into.

Logan was shocked to see that there were close to twenty kids in here. Some older, some very young. Boys and girls, of almost every imaginable variety. There was even one boy of about twelve, in a wheelchair. Logan was brought back by Kelly talking, and in here, it would be easy for everyone to listen in. Logan was sure then, that everyone else knew Kelly's story here. And from the looks he got from some of them, it was probably a pretty bad one.

“Kane and I grew up in a little town somewhat south and west of Salt Lake City.” He looked briefly over to Kane, who just gave him a nod, and walked off with Danny. “Danny doesn't really like hearing the stories, again.” Kelly said in way of explanation. “Anyways, our parents were a part of a fundamentalist Mormon church. I'm not sure what you know of the Mormons, but they used to practice polygamy.” He stopped to look at us to see if we knew what that meant, and was surprised to see all of us nodding understanding. Logan was pretty sure he knew where this was going, but wanted to let Kelly get through it.

“Well, the mainstream Mormon church abandoned polygamy a long time ago. Some of them however, didn't like the idea, and split off from the main church. The problem then becomes that there needs to be more girls than boys. If each man gets to have many wives, then there has to be fewer guys.” Kelly again looked around to make sure everyone was with him so far, and continued with a sigh, when he saw that they all still were.

“Unfortunately for us, the women were still giving birth to boys. So they had to figure out how to get rid of the boys so that they could save the girls for themselves.” Kelly sighed again, and looked down at the floor. “Some of the boys were thrown out on the streets for simple things like watching TV, or reading a book they weren't supposed to. Others weren't so lucky. Kane and I found out that they were actually killing some of the boys, and we were next. We found out, and tried to leave. They caught us on the way out, and there was a fight. We escaped, but not before, hurting one of the Deacons real bad. Since then, they've been hunting for us.”

Kelly looked back up and into Logan's eyes. He saw nothing but caring and sympathy there. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves, and then laughed a bit, to relieve the tension. “But anyways, we can talk all about that later on, I'm supposed to be leading you around, and introducing you to people.”

With that, Kelly led them off to where everyone else was gathered, up against the back wall. Kelly was about to say something else when Juan stopped them.  “Hey, you hear that?”

Logan and Kelly both looked at each other, not hearing anything, but William spoke up almost right away.  “Hmmm.  Sounds to me like it's a Truck.  Probably a Ford, and I would guess large.” 

Logan was surprised by that, but he knew that those boys had better senses then he did.  “That's probably my mom.” He said.   He then took off at a run to meet his mom, and let her know what was going on.

***Meanwhile in another part of the camp***

Major Bryce led the way into the main office building of the camp. They kept their silence as they walked through the building. Adam was noticing every little detail throughout the place. The entire place was run down, but well cared for. Many of the old offices were turned into storage spaces, packed floor to ceiling. Adam was sure that this place could hold a lot more than the twenty or so people he saw outside. Finally, they were lead into a large conference room.

The major sat down in a seat and motioned for the rest to have a seat. “Well, gentleman, to be totally honest, I don't really have much use for formality. So let's do this. In here, we can drop rank. Please, just call me Jack. And if I remember correctly, your Adam and Joe?”

Joe nodded, while leaning forward; he spoke to the other two. “Well, if we're gonna put all our cards on the table, I guess you should know a few things. First off, I know you probably think that I'm the one in charge here. Well, I'm not. Adam is the leader of the U.N.I.T, and I just help out.

Jack's eyebrows kinda arched at that, and he turned his full attention to Adam. Adam took a deep breath to calm his nerves. This really would be the first time he had spoken to an adult as the commander. He was trying to figure out exactly what to say and what not to. Jack must have figured out what was wrong, and decided to break the ice a little bit.

“Adam, before you begin, I would like to introduce you to David Hathaway. Former Sergeant First class, of the US Army. He is also second in command of this compound.”

Dave reached over, and not really understanding what's going on, but deciding to play along, offered his hand to Adam, first. He then offered it to Joe, “Call me Dave,” he said, laughing a bit, trying to lighten things even more. “Only my mother and Jack call me David.”

Once Dave sat back down, Adam leaned forward. “Okay, I guess I should just lay it all out for you guys. First off, the U.N.I.T. stands for the Universal Next-Generation Infiltration Team. We were created by the United States Military to be able to go anywhere in the world, and operate in almost any conceivable situation. We were genetically engineered to be a fully operational Special Forces Unit, at a very young age.” Adam continued to explain everything to Jack and Dave, while they tried valiantly to keep their jaws off the table.

Adam really wasn't going to tell them everything, but after the report he got from Juan and William, he figured honesty would work best here.  Adam had barely finished with his explanation, when he heard the unmistakable sound of Joe's big pick up truck with its trailer pulling up on the road outside.  He got up from his seat, and moved to the door saying “Doctor Janet Hayes is here, and she's one of us.”  Dave and Jack followed Adam and Joe, as they went out the door.