Things happening in the Middle East

[Ron Caliburn]

Recently a long term customer of mine who knows about my other interests forwarded this to me. It was sent to him by his son, who was serving overseas.

Where we were precisely is classified, but I can tell you we were in a country that is currently experiencing an insurgency involving extremist jihadi elements. We were on a long-range recon mission; our goal was to get some first-hand assessment of the effects of our drone strikes on the jihadists. We were there without the knowledge of the local government, even though the country is nominally considered to be friendly.

We’d been in country for about two weeks and were making our way back to our exfiltration point. To avoid detection we’d been travelling only at night and staying in concealed positions during the day. It was mid-afternoon and half of us were asleep while the other half were on watch when the trucks drove up.

They stopped about two hundred meters from our position. Two five-ton trucks that had been made in the former Soviet Union and a couple of beat-up looking Toyota Hiluxes with heavy machineguns on the back. Jihadis in black cotton shirts and trousers started jumping out of the trucks, maybe about thirty of them in total. Then, they yanked half a dozen men in orange jump suits out the back of one of the big trucks. The guys in orange had hoods over their heads and their hands shackled.

By this time all of us were awake and having a quiet debate on what we should do. Our orders were for no contact, and we were outnumbered by about four to one, but the way one of the jihadis was sharpening a big meat cleaver told us we were about to get a first-hand view on how this group makes its propaganda videos.

We’d put it to a quick vote and decided that we couldn’t just watch what was about to go down. We were probably going to get curbstomped and scrub the mission to boot, but we had to do something. We were picking our targets when from a swirl of white sand emerged a new figure.

At first, I thought it was some kind of half-dragon, covered in scales and with a pair of curved horns on its head. It took a couple moments of watching him to realise that the black scales I was seeing were some kind of metal armour and the horns were coming out of a helmet. The new guy also had a metal face mask that looked kind of like a snarling dragon.
The jihadis were just as surprised to see him as we were, but they started yelling at him in the local dialect. The armoured guy just kept walking towards them, unsheathing a curved black sword as he went advanced.
“Crazy mutha’s gonna get himself killed.” I remember my RTO saying just before the first Jihandi brought up his AK and fired a shot into the man in the dragon suit’s center mass. There was a distinct ringing sound when it bounced off the metal scales.

The Jihadis exchanged surprised curses and opened up on full auto.
The man in the dragon suit kept coming though, those black scales shedding 7.62 Soviet like it was water. A Jihadi with a PK even drew a long burst back and forth across the guy’s torso a couple of times and didn’t even slow him down. Me and the rest of the patrol were quietly cheering the man in the dragon suit on. It was absurd, a guy with a sword against thirty guys with guns, but we so wanted to see it happen.

That’s when one of the Jihadis shouldered an RPG and cut loose. The blast knocked the man in the dragon suit off his feet. We were stunned, but the Jihadi’s were celebrating, calling out to their god while they moved to surround the smoking body.

“Hey Sarge.” I heard our machinegunner whisper. “The tangos all have empty guns and are all looking at the crazy sumbitch they just blew up instead of at us.”

He was right. We were never going to have a better chance. The Sarge thought so too, because a beat later came the word. “Light ‘em up.”

I put my first few rounds into the jihadi with the RPG and our machinegunner put one of the gun trucks out of commission while the Sarge lobbed a 40mm HEDP grenade into the other. A few of the luckier Jihadis managed to drop behind cover and reloaded, but we’d taken out half of them by the time there was any return fire.

That still left us outnumbered two to one.

At least it did, if you counted the man in the dragon suit out. In the midst of the firefight, even after taking a direct hit from an RPG, the dude stands up. I remember getting a good look at him through my ACOG. There was a big ragged hole in the armour on his side and I could see he had a pretty nasty looking wound underneath, but that wasn’t enough to keep him down. In fact, it didn’t look to be slowing him down in the least, as I watched him I could clearly see the metal scales shifting to cover the hole.

Busy shooting at us, most of the Jihadists didn’t see the man in the dragon suit get back up until it was too late. He went after them with his black scimitar, taking off heads and arms with ease. One guy tried to raise his gun to block the attack, but the ebony sword still cut clean through the gun and sliced the man behind it in two, from shoulder to hip, like it were slicing air.

Once the killing was done, the man in the dragon suit walked to the men in the orange jumpsuits. He pulled off their hoods and sliced the bonds off their wrists. Once the former prisoners were on their feet, he pointed at one of the trucks, and then pointed towards the east. The ex-prisoners immediately scrambled for the truck he’d pointed at.

Then he looked over at us. I remember him making eye contact with me, even though I was two football fields away and hidden under a camo tarp, I knew he was looking me in the eye. There was the faintest of nods and his gaze then shifted slightly.

“All who can hear me, be advised there is a truck of fleeing civilians about to be headed eastbound from this position. Provide any available assistance in getting them to safety.” It was our radioman’s voice, but the words were so methodical, so toneless, I couldn’t believe it was him speaking.

“This is Command, we’ll have two Predators escorting them in about five mikes.” came the rather puzzled sounding reply from the radio.

“Thank you, and peace be upon you.” The radioman said, neither the words nor the tone were his.

Then the man in the dragon suit raised his black scimitar in salute to us, sheathed it and disappeared in a swirl of blowing sand.

When we got back to base and made our report, they seized every camera, every memory card and every computer we’d had with us. They sent us to a shrink who told us we were delusional from PTSD caused by our long patrol and to forget everything we’d seen out there. I’m probably going to lose my career for sharing this, maybe even do time, but I know what I saw was real and the story has to be told. Somewhere out there is a superman with armour and a sword who is fighting our enemies singlehandedly. We need to find him and help him out.

[Lord Shakar]

Interesting, tale your friend shared with you. The man in armor is very intriguing. While I do not operate anywhere near that area, I may have to see what my library holds on information regarding such thing.

I have encountered such things as regenerating armor before, hell, one of my Artifacts has the ability to generate a scale mail armor that regenerates, but that is due to magics inherent in the item.

All in all a powerful entity has joined the fight. though not against a supernatural foe he is apparently on the side of good if his actions are any indication.

Though I care not about most issues of good and evil.

[Ron Caliburn]

So I asked some questions of those who know some things over there and it turns out this guy may have been active for almsot a year. I haven't found any confirmation of American sightings of him, but apparently the locals know about him well.

The local civilians call him the Dragon, I think for the reasons above. The local jihadis refer to him as the Demon and have posted rewards for his death or capture. Cellphone intercepts have shown him attacking the jihadis on a weekly basis or so.

He doesn't seem to be involving himself in battles, he just shows up, carves up a bunch of jihadis, messess up their plan and leaves.

[Lord Shakar]

Hmmm, I wonder if he does more than target the human evils over there. Granted the human evils over there are aplenty and I would hate to speculate on what the World behind the Curtain is up to with all that chaos over there, but tis interesting that this new entity seems to focus on the human side of it given the apparent power that he/she possesses.

[Tms3]

could we be dealing with some form of Golam? Granted I know there mostly asouated with the jewish rabis. but there not the only mystic and mages, that are fowallowers of the abrahamic G-d

[Ron Caliburn]

The read I got from what I was told was that there was flesh and blood under the armor scales. At least it sounds like he took a wound in what I retold above, didn't seem to slow him down too much though.