Boss opened his eyes and looked down, four feet below him a patch of grass and roots spun left to right. He looked up and saw the parachute silk snagged in the branches the tree he was hanging from.

“Oh. Cool. Hanging from a tree in my ‘chute, what a cliché”

He looked down again and twisted the harness lock on his chest. It was slick with blood and hard to get a grip on. It clicked and he smacked it with the palm of his hand, dropped out of the webbing and down to the forest floor.

Pain shot through him as the ends of broken ribs and other snaps grated against each other as he collapsed into a ball on his side.

“Fuck! Stop, box it away – stay conscious, stay awake!” he thought through red waves of agony.

The roaring in his ear eased a little as he strained to hear the noise that had woken him from his dangling dreams. An auto engine, coming close – through blurred eyes he sought to get some fix on the source. He could make out the tree line fifty feet away to the west and coming across the grass towards this was a jeep, silhouetted against the low sun.

Boss had no idea how far he may of drifted, the engagement was close to the border and he had to deploy his chute early, could be on either side. God it hurt. “Get up. Need to move” he growled at himself.

Figures had jumped out of the jeep and were coming towards him. He could hear voices shouting. He fumbled for his pistol with numb hands. Nothing seemed to be working, it took both hands to pull the gun out of its holster and it felt like it weighed more than he did.

Boss rolled onto his knees and tried to get upright, focusing on the approaching figures, he held the gun in shaking hands in front of him and tried to see what they were, Monkeys or Rabbits.

“No fucking Monkey is coming near me!”

The gun waved left and right, its weight sending fresh waves of pain stabbing into Boss from all angles.

“No, Monkey, bastard is…”

Boss fell face down onto the ground and lay still.

The two figures from the jeep stood over Boss, one of them dug a radio out of its jacket.

“Control, we got him. Send a medivac chopper now! He looks bad.”