De Oppresso Liber takes place during the Vietnam war, just after the TET offensive ended. Following Green beret Sgt. Daniel Hastings, his group known as "Python 1" is sent on a long range recon mission in the north of Vietnam to find a POW camp.
Behind enemy lines[]
Daniel Hastings felt his heart rate go up tenfold.
less than ten meteres away walked an enemy the US army feared more than any other, the Vietcong, more than 100 of them. The Green berets may be good, but five men against a hundred? They would be shaking hands with god himself within seconds. The flow of men seemed almost constant, they marched in silence, no talking, no smoking, they were silent. Practically invisible.
Hastings noted the way they looked, clean, shaven, well fed. They must be close to a camp of theirs, possibly their objective.
His team, Python 1, were tasked to scout out a POW camp, supposedly hundreds of men captured in the TET offensive were being kept their. The Pythons were determined to bring them home, all of them. But, unless they could get passed Charlie, the POW's would stay where they were.
Daniel had lost sight of his comrades. They had kitted themselves out before heading behind enemy lines, painted their faces green, brown and black to keep their skin covered, used state of the art uniforms which would blend them in to the dense Vietnamese jungle. His four comrades were all somewhere in the undergrowth, hopefully out of sight.
The constant flow of men seemed to thin out, Hastings figured that soon they could escape without them noticing and carry on to complete their mission.
One last VC walked about 20 metres behind. He seemed careless and why wouldn't he? Special forces patrols were rare this deep in North Vietnamese territory. He strolled aimlessy along the jungle path carved out by the NVA to allow easier patrols but not give away the paths they were using. To a regular soldier, it was just a bit of dead shrub, to a green beret it was a map leading all the way to Charlies house.
The carelessnes of the man's attitude seemed to dissapear after he looked right where Hastings was hiding, had he seen him? If so he would alert the troops up ahead and the team were surely doomed, Hastings acted swiftly. He leapt up furiously and cupped his hand around the horrified looking Veitcong, he dragged him down into the undergrowth and forced his knife into the heart of his enemy, the VC struggled for a few moments like a lamb would when being taken to the slaughterhouse, soon though the man's struggling stopped, his body became limp and his final breath sounded almost like a dissapointed sigh, dissapointed at not driving the American Devils out his homeland.
Daniel felt blood on his hands. It didn't bother him anymore, knowing he had just killed someone, it was just something you did now. He was just...working.
"Hastings, what the fuck happened?," Daniel heard a harsh whisper come from behind him. He turned to see his commander, Captain Miller. The man was thin with a sharp nose and a well defined jaw, looking at him you wouldn't tell he was a green beret but, he was in fact a perfect killing machine.
"He saw me, I had to shiv the fucker," Hastings gave his answer as though talking to a regular grunt, not his CO, but thats the way they worked, they were all the same except they hadn't different bits of metal on their uniforms.