"Alfenwehr taught me the truth about the saying

'it can always get worse' because it always got

worse. But I also learned that 'buckle down

and drive on' was just as valid.

And you could drive far on rage and hatred."

2/19th Special Weapons Group Motorpool

Restricted Area, Alfenwehr West Germany

Late Winter- January, 1986

Day 11 of Repairs

Day 3 of the Second Incident

Night

We'd managed to get into the motorpool. Across the street, across the gravel strip big enough to pull a five-ton into and have people jump out of the back without ending up in the road, up the ten foot incline and then two paces to the fence, through the fence, and then across the lower motorpool where the trailers, cranes, forklifts, and dozers were kept, into the POL shack, and then to the side of the building in order to enter.

We'd lost one to the mountain already.

To Tandy.

But at least we'd made it into the dubious shelter of the motorpool bays.

He'd stopped screaming at least as we quickly slid in through the door.

King and his team moved into the bay first, then my team followed, Aine pulling up the rear and I slammed closed the door. While we all started stripping out of our cold weather gear, she opened the last Claymore bag that hung from her neck and pulled the land mine out. Right next to the door on both sides were wooden benches with empty tool rack cork boards above the benches. Usually the mechanics used it to take apart smaller parts from the vehicles, like alternators, water pumps, or even repairing wire harnesses. She set the mine underneath the bench to the left of the door, then used the extra, non-standard parts Clance shoved into any of the Claymore bags the crew prepped to create a 9 volt battery charged trigger for the mine. If someone opened the door, it would pull the thin piece of cardboard out of the clip, completing the circuit and firing off the mine.

By the time she was done with the work, using two blasting caps for redundancy instead of one, we'd all stripped down to winter BDU's and lined field jackets, black gloves instead of trigger mittens, our extreme cold weather gear folded neatly and set on the left hand bench. Aine did the same as I looked around at the dim bay.

There were a couple of lights on in the bays, providing dim lights. Some of the lights were on a separate circuit and couldn't be turned off, even at the fuse box, since it came off the junction down at the corner. A trick of the light made it look like the shadows were deepening while I was watching, the lights dimming.

A glance at Bomber got me a nod, telling me he was seeing it too.

fuck

I could see six vehicles up on lifts, two five tons and four CUC-V's. They all had extension cords running to the grills, and I knew that was to the heater/recirculators that kept the engine from freezing up. The tires were off, laying below the hubs, with the lug-nuts beside the tire. The doors were open to prevent cold damage to the seals, and I could see one of the radios in the CUC-V from where I was standing just inside the door.

perfect. Clear up here, call it in to the LT, and get orders instead of pulling ideas out my ass.

I cursed the fact that my entrance into PLDC had been delayed. Every time we had a slot for our unit I got the 'mission essential' excuse. I knew a lot of guys who felt they didn't need the school, but my older brother had attended, and told me what was taught. The training I would have gotten there might make the difference between those Soviet guys tearing us apart and us winning.

All I had to go off of was leadership correspondence courses, the times I'd been tasked to support an infantry unit and managed to get classes alongside of them, and the advice from the Rangers I hung out with now and then.

I was terrified that I was about to lead all of my men into a massacre.

Most people didn't know that half of the modern Army was training. You trained to take orders, improvise, and do your job, that's what the enlisted ranks were for, then they trained you to lead those men and make plans to carry out your orders, which was the lower NCO ranks, and then they trained you to lead the NCO's to make sure that you could carry out the more expansive orders given to you by the higher ranking officers. If we weren't working, we were training, training on vehicles, training on weapons, training on equipment, training on doctrine.

Unfortunately, I hadn't had training on engaging hostile forces in a dark motorpool in the middle of a fucking blizzard with a killer who fed on fear lurking around in the darkness.

"How come it's warm in here?" Johnson asked, breaking into my gloomy train of thought that my inexperience and lack of training was going to get everyone killed. He started speaking a split second before the blowers suspended from the ceiling kicked on, making Aine giggle at how he'd just gotten embarrassed.

"Extreme cold weather can damage some of the parts, it's cheaper to keep the heaters running than it is to replace all those rubber gaskets and anything else that might get damaged, Private Johnson," Aine said sweetly, turning to look behind her at us. She was bent over lacing her boots, giving everyone a view of her BDU clad buttocks.

"What she said," King chuckled, checking out Aine's butt with an appreciative smile.

"Let's go. Noise discipline, light discipline," I said, tapping my flashlight.

The bays were very dim, and while the blowers kept the bay warmer than outside it was still only a little above freezing. I was warming up fast, and I made a mental note that if we didn't withdraw because the Spetz were forcing us into a retreat, I'd make everyone eat before we started to move again. We'd need the carbohydrates, fats, and sugars if we were going to make it back to the barracks and arrive in any kind of decent shape. The body is a furnace, a meat machine, it needs fuel, and in cold temperatures the body turned up the furnace to keep the meat machine warm, and heat means more fuel. That last thing I'd need if we lived through the next 20 minutes is everyone dropping on the way back.

If everything went according to plan, we'd catch the Spetz in the main office, where they were probably looking for the keycode to open the War Fighter tunnels, or maybe they were hoping to find the keys to the Motorpool Armory, or maybe they were just trying to find something else for some reason or maybe meet up with the Colonel and what was left of his men. If we caught them, there we'd be able to take them quickly and cleanly and figure out what the hell was actually going on.

I had suspicions, but nothing concrete. Enough for me to craft a plan of action but not enough to keep the DoD and State Department from throwing me under the bus when all of this hit the goddamn fan.

yeah, but they're here, meaning that this might not matter in 72 to 120 hours...

I'd managed to get a look at the unit METL, which was the Mission Essential Task List, which had a LOT of data on what the DoD expected out of our unit. There was the standard 'arm fighting units to repel... blah blah blah' but the worst part was in the appendixes. That's where I'd found out that in the event of hostilities our life expectancy was measured in negative time units. Because of our function we were a 'legitimate pre-hostility target', which meant that it was in the Soviet Union's best interest to take us out prior to moving on the Fulda Gap.

Take out 2/19th, you take out a large amount of 8th Infantry and 3rd Armor's nuclear and chemical arsenal as well as vital ammunition, fuel, and equipment stocks.

The fact that Vympel was here meant that there was a goddamn good chance that relations between the Soviet Union and the US or NATO were looking ugly. Or that the Soviet Union was planning a surprise push.

Which fit with the data I'd gathered by paying attention to Rumor Control, AFN broadcasts, the Army Times, and morning briefings. Add in the assaults on Atlas, the killings, and the fact that we were cut off again, and a surgical strike could screw us. Sure the rest of Group was at Graf, but with our war fighting equipment destroyed, the records destroyed, and the disruption the loss of the barracks would cause, all the rest of the Group would be is just troops with field gear.

Which meant that the appendix came into play, Group would be dissolved and attached to the nearest units, those that could would push toward their sites, and the upper ranks would attach to the units they were supposed to provide NBC operations tactical advice to.

In my brain I was seeing blooming mushroom clouds, Soviet tanks rolling through the German towns I visited frequently, and my brain added color and modernization to the World War 2 pictures I'd studied in school.

"Stillwater," King said, nudging me and breaking me out of my dark thoughts. I glanced at him. "I'm going to take my team, head to the back, and sweep forward. If we need reinforcement we'll shout out red-five." I grinned at the Star Wars reference. He squeezed my forearm. "We've got this, man."

"Move out. I'll take point, Bomber, you and Nagle behind me. Stokes, you'll pull drag." I looked at Aine. "Aine, don't fuck around, protect our retreat and withdraw as well as our equipment. Shoot to kill." Aine nodded, her lip held between her teeth and looking like a small child.

Moving like in the movies, crouched over, made my fucking kidneys hurt, and living pretty much in the field constantly made my movements sure and my back straight. My weapon was ready, the butt socketed against my shoulder, over the metal staples, my weapon pointed down at a 45 degree angle, left hand wrapped around the M-203 handgrip, right hand on the pistol grip, safety off, trigger finger along the side of the trigger assembly.

The fans kicked off. There was a clink in the dimness of the bay. There was another lightning flash that filled the bay with purple light as the thunder rocked the entire building. The heaters kicked back on and I thought I heard something that didn't fit.

I checked the back of the CUC-V with a glance to make sure that nobody was waiting to leap out in a spinning backflip and part my hair with a hatchet, then checked down between the vehicle, able to see King moving forward with me against the back wall, the pig held at the ready.

That weird feeling filled me. The stomach ache went away, the fear became a small and tiny thing that did little more than fill my bloodstream with combat chemicals, and my awareness expanded again. My muscles felt like they were thrumming, I could feel the air currents.

Once again I noticed that XM-16E1 felt alien and wrong in my hands.

The little lizard in the back of my brain gave a venomous hiss a split second before it became evident that my plan had gone to shit.

"Oh, shit!" Johnson shouted.

Somebody cut loose with a long tearing burst from an M-16. The popping noise was distinct, familiar. The sound of a short, sharp return burst from an AK-47 was just as distinctive, which let me know that someone wasn't just shooting at shadows.

The lizard hissed again and I glanced to the side, already turning on my heel and toe as I dropped down onto one knee, just like training had pounded into me. My rifle barrel was coming up as I dropped and turned, the butt of the weapon tucking into the hollow of my shoulder, and by the time my right knee hit the concrete I already had someone in my sight picture.

He was down on one knee, just like me, and taking aim on someone in woodland camouflage with his AK-47, his white and light gray uniform and his gear visibly different from ours. The front aiming post, the rear aiming circle, and the other man's torso all fluidly merged together and my training kicked in without even thinking about it.

"Contact!" I called out, the same time as Stokes and King called out the same single word.

The trigger went back smoothly three times as he fired, our weapon's fire merging into one big noise that shook the air. Fiery pain blossomed inside my shoulder and each shot felt like someone pounding nails into my joint as the buttplate hammered against the staples in my shoulder. I could see dimples appear in the metal wall behind him as my shots missed.

The lizard snarled and I fired without bothering to use the sight as the other guy pulled the trigger. The guy gave a strangled scream that suddenly turned bubbly and weak. His weapon flew out of his hands as he pitched to the side, his body trying to save itself from the bullets that impacted him. My sight picture swept over someone in woodland camouflage and the lizard hissed again, nudging me back toward the way we were going.

"Stillwater, get down!" someone, Bomber, shouted out, and without thinking I threw myself prone and an M-16 banged away, the whip-crack of bullets going over my head a close buzzing snarl that made my try to press my belly through the floor. There was the heavier crack of an AK-47 firing at the same time. Sparks howled off the concrete in front of my face as the steel jacketed round hit and slammed into my shoulder, speckles of pain in my face as tiny chips of concrete hit me. Something hit the top of my helmet like a sledgehammer and my body went numb at the same time as my body gave a full spasm and my vision went out.

Pitch black, not even sparkles.

"Man down!" Stokes called out. I was vaguely aware of my foot kicking, just tapping in a steady rhythm, but I couldn't stop it.

There was another fusillade of weapon's fire and I was aware that my finger was pulling the trigger, recoil making my weapon bounce in my limp hand. Bomber yelled 'moving' right after Stokes and Nagle yelled 'cover' and I heard someone throw themselves down next to me as the fire kicked up. Stokes yelled out reloading at the same time as Lanks and King.

When my weapon ran dry, I could hear Bomber calling out that he was reloading.

More than one voice was screaming, two of them high, thready and bubbling, one just raw primal agony, the last voice more angry than anything else and obviously female. I could tell I wasn't one of them, my breathing was steady and deep. I heard an empty magazine clatter to the concrete next to me, then the slide, slap, and snap of a weapon getting locked and loaded. Right afterwards I felt firm pressure on the side of my neck for a second.

"Moving!" Nagle called out, and Bomber and Stokes called out 'cover' and the popping of the M-16's mingled with the tearing sound of the AK's. Someone else started screaming and King yelled that he was reloading.

"No contact! No contact!" King yelled. "They're breaking contact!"

"Keep up the pressure!" Bomber yelled. "Stillwater's down, I'm stepping up!"

Bomber was telling them that he was taking over. As my Assistant Squad Leader, he was trained in everything he needed to know to take over my squad, my site, my crew. He knew my job inside and out, and took part in every bit of leadership training I could scavenge for the two of us.

"Stillwater's down? We need to fall back!" Levins called out.

"At ease that, keep on the pressure!" Stokes shouted back. There was another burst of AK fire and I heard an M-16 cook off next to me.

My finger was still pulling the trigger on an empty weapon. I could tell my weapon was empty by the faint feeling of an immobile trigger on a finger I could only vaguely feel.

"How is he?" Bomber asked right after two warm fingers pressed on my neck again.

"Alive," Nagle snapped. I felt a hand on my cheek and a thumb move my eyelid. "Shit, his pupil is fixed." A finger pushed up on my other eyelid. "This one reacts. Cover me while I evac him back to where McCullen is." Her voice was stable, steady, clinically detached.

"Don't let my boy die," Bomber growled. "Cover me, Stokes."

I heard him scrabble away, the sound overlayed by the snarl of fire from Stokes' M-16. I could hear who I assumed was Nagle move backwards. Something else hit the top of my helmet and something else howled off the pavement next to me and clanked into the front of the five-ton I was laying in front of. My neck was on fire, it felt like the time I'd wrenched my neck and gotten whiplash.

Hands grabbed my ankles, dragging me backwards as the rifle fire picked up for a second and Bomber repeated: "They're trying to break contact, keep up the pressure!" The concrete was rough against my cheek, but I could barely feel it. My hearing was going out, being smothered by a high pitched whining that seemed to be gaining volume.

"They're got backup! King, fire up the pig!" Bomber yelled.

"Roger that!" King yelled, and a second later there was the heavy thudding of the M-60 firing. The sound of weaponsfire, even the pig, vanished as the entire bay lit up purple and thunder shook the building. When the thunder quit, I could hear that King wasn't hosing off his entire belt but rather putting out short sharp bursts. The man was rated Expert on the pig and I knew that he represented Group during the Battalion and Brigade competitions.

"2/19th, finish the fight!" Bomber bellowed, King and Stokes' voice joining his after our unit number. My rifle was still dragging along the pavement, my arms moving so they were extended over my head. Something in my shoulder snapped and the pain blocked out the pain in my neck as it spread into my chest and down my back.

"Knock the first aid box off the wall, McCullen," Nancy snapped as I was being dragged around a corner. "Just use the butt of your... is that a prisoner?"

"Yes, Specialist. He realized I had the drop on him and surrendered to me." Aine's voice was full of dark mirth. "Isn't he a good boy?" I could dimly hear boots thud onto the floor as I came to a stop. "He just knelt down and put his hands behind his neck." I heard metal snap and something crash while I was being rolled onto my back. "It wasn't secured very tight, Specialist Nagle, I could do it with my hands."

...watch her, Nancy, she's stronger and tougher than she looks...

My boots were unlaced and Nagle asked for my cold weather gear, which she put under my boots right before she unsnapped my LBE and then my belt.

"Keep him stable, Aine, watch your prisoner, guard our gear, and treat him for shock," Nagle snapped. "Don't let him die."

"No. That won't happen," Aine said, her voice bleak and cold. "I'm not letting Aodán die."

"Man down!" Levins called out.

"Shit, I gotta get back out there," Nancy said. I heard something hit the ground. "I'll be back."

I felt more than saw Nancy move away as Bomber called out something in Russian. He was probably mangling it, but he'd been trying to learn Russian since he got to 2/19th, and was fluent in German within two months. I idly wondered if he was calling on them to surrender. King yelled out 'reloading' when Bomber yelled. Another voice yelled back, and Bomber yelled something else. There was AK-47 fire in reply and Bomber answered with 'frag out!' Three thudding heartbeats that hammered on my eardrums later there was a sharp loud crack, the sound of a grenade going off, and screaming followed it. The firing picked back up.

"On our right, they're trying to flank," Lanks yelled. Her voice sounded tight.

There was the loud crack of a Claymore going off, and screaming started. The lizard was trying to get my lines connected, but he still updated my mental map. From the sound they'd tried the back door and the Claymore King and Aine had set up on it had gone off and caught at least one person. Ball bearings propelled by C-4 would tear a man to hamburger.

Someone yelled in Russian and Bomber yelled: "They're going to try to push through."

"Bitch, you shot me!" Levins yelled. "Fuck you, fuck you!"

The lizard hissed, trying to get me back up, back on my feet. On the silhouette of my body, the only thing that showed was a strobing circle around my head and a blot of red on my right shoulder that had a strobing carat around it.

"Finish the fight!" Bomber bellowed, and King answered him. There were two more short sharp bursts of M-16 fire, a long burst from the pig that lasted almost two full seconds, and then silence.

The only sound was the blowers and Aine's breathing as her boots creaked and her hand rested on my chest. The smell of apple blossoms enveloped me and I could smell Scope on her breath as it warmed my face.

"You aren't allowed to die, fiorghra," Aine breathed, using the old word for 'beloved' like she always did when she was talking to me about something that was important to her. "It's just pain, it's just injuries, and you're a McDaur'n, those things don't matter." The warmth from her hand was spreading through my chest, pushing back the pain from my shoulder. "I own you, no matter what anyone else says, and you aren't allowed to die unless I give permission."

When I tried to talk, tried to answer her, tried to tell her I wasn't hers, she didn't own me, and to stop touching me, all that came out was a low groan. She giggled slightly and her other hand cupped my cheek.

"Should I cut his throat and wash you down with his blood?" she asked. "That works, you know that as well as I do. Should I perform a blood eagle on him to give you his strength?" She chuckled, low in her throat, and I realized she wasn't speaking English, but rather what the grandparents of our families spoke.

Gaelic.

As a boy I wasn't supposed to ever speak it, I barely had a working knowledge of it, but more than a few of the Matrons refused to speak in anything but Gaelic, no matter what their ethnicity, which made it odd at times when you knelt before a Hispanic woman who gave you instructions or reprimand in Gaelic.

"That thick bodied kelly of yours can save you," Aine breathed, using the old word for warrior woman. "Your soul is intertwined with hers, so she can save you, but if I save you then I'll own her too." Aine's voice was full of dark mirth, the language making her words lyrical, musical, and almost otherworldly. Each exhalation pushed the scent of apple blossoms and blood into my face. The apple blossoms was what everyone smelled near her, a scent she seemed to exude as naturally as other people smelled of sweat.

The hot coppery smell of blood hadn't started until after she'd lost her virginity.

"I think I'd like that, Aodán. Owning both of your souls." She gave a nasty, wicked chuckle from low in her throat. "I knew from the moment I saw you in kneeling on my bed that you'd have the richest blood in generations." Her lips brushed mine and I could feel electric sparks where our lips touched. Her tongue grazed my cheek where it had been scraping across the concrete, lapping at the blood I knew was oozing from the scrape. "I can taste my baby in your blood, taste the Aine your blood is waiting to put in my belly."

Her hand vanished and the cold started seeping into me again, the warmth from her hand on my chest fading inward to where her hand had been. The pain from my shoulder and neck came back in a flood and the sounds of the blowers came flooding back, along with the voices of my crew yelling 'clear' as they finished sweeping rooms.

Aine was speaking in Russian and I heard slow, dragging footsteps of someone wearing boots coming closer. There was another thump, and I could sense someone next to me, leaning over me. Aine's voice came again, the harsh sounds of Russian made musical somehow as she spoke them. I heard bone snap and the sound of 550 cord snapping. Then I could feel my LBE being swept out of the way, hear the Velcro of my Kevlar vest being opened and my field jacked being unzipped and opened. Aine gave a wicked little laugh and ran her hand across my BDU top right before she unbuttoned it and moved it out of the way. My brown T-shirt was pulled up and her hand ran over my exposed skin.

"You McDaur'ns all are so exotic looking, Aodán," Aine said softly in Gaelic, her breath in my face. "Your Navajo grand matron may have taken all that body hair but she left all of you boys so exotic, and I've always been jealous of those lovely eyes your girls have." Her fingertips ran through the sparse red hair over my sternum and her lips grazed mine again before her tongue caressed the abrasion on my cheek. I knew she was lapping up the blood that was trickling down my cheek from the scrape that had been caused when Nancy had dragged me down by my legs.

There was more Russian and I faintly felt her pull the knife out of my boot as two hands grabbed onto me at my collar. Aine was speaking Gaelic, words I didn't know the meaning of but knew of, words I'd heard the Matrons sing after harvest and before planting. Aine's voice rose slightly, the cadence moving faster before she went silent. There was a crackling sound and blood spattered all over my chest right before it sluiced onto my skin. As the blood ran down my sides, soaking into my uniform, the hot coppery stink filling my nostrils but not wiping away the thick cloying smell of apple blossoms.

When her voice stopped a heavy weight fell on me, driving the breath from my body. My heart beat twice, thudding heavily, and I felt the weight being pulled off of me. Aine's lips touched mine, both of our lips parted, and she exhaled softly into my mouth as I inhaled. Fingers touched my chest and then my forehead, my chest and then my cheeks, and finally my chest and then the underside of my jaw. Her hands were rubbing the blood into my skin, her fingers were stronger than her petite little fingers should have been, and she had started whispering in that singsong tone.

She finished singing and placed three fingers over my heart for a moment before pressing firmly for the space of three heartbeats. The fingers withdrew and my sight came back with an audible snap that sounded to my ears like a branch breaking followed by an echoing thunderclap. I could hear clearly again, the blowers, the creak of the metal walls of the building, the echo of the thunder, and the sound of my crew calling out to one another. Aine was looking at me, her too wide green eyes bright and glittering, a flush at her cheeks that brought out how pale she was, and the freckles across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose plain as day. Her helmet was off and I could see her naturally curly red hair pulled into a tight bun that wouldn't get in the way of her mask or helmet, and I noticed again how her ears looked slightly pointed. She had blood on her lips that glinted in the dim light, and as I watched she stuck out her tongue, sharply pointed and too long for such a small mouth, and licked my forehead with two swipes, followed by three swipes on each cheek, and one under my jaw. She moaned, almost as if she was in pain, and sweat appeared on her brow.

"Oh, my beloved, your pain is so sweet, such a deep well-spring of agony hidden behind your will." She smiled, her sharp little teeth, as if she'd never lost her baby teeth, glittered in the light as lightning struck and thunder rumbled at the same time. She was pulling my brown T-shirt down covering my skin. "I can taste your kelly in your pain, her love, her devotion, her need for you." She licked the abrasion on my cheek again. "I can taste the Texan in your blood. Is he your lover too? Have you feasted on one another's flesh like the ancient blood that courses through your veins desires or do you both slake what you want upon your kelly as a substitute for one another? You're intertwined, and I can taste three souls on my tongue, your intermixed blood."

"That's what made you so hard to control, I hadn't realized that I needed to take control of all three of you." Her face came closer, the tip of her pointy little nose touching mine. "I will have all three of you. I will take your souls, your hearts, and your blood, and give birth to an Aine like neither family has seen since Cassius Marcus Lattro and Marcius Cassianus Lattro were gifted my mother." Her laugh was other worldly, cruel, and it brought out the sharp planes of her face and made her too large slightly slanted eyes look inhuman.

From upstairs came a fusillade of weapon's fire, a scream, and then a short sharp burst of M-16 fire. I faintly heard Levins shout out 'clear' right before another bolt of lightning turned the inside of the motorpool purple and thunder made the entire building shake.

"The baby will let me leave this place and take my place on the council." She smiled, her teeth glimmering in a lightning strike that was drowned out by her words. "I'll cast out my mother and everyone who tried to force me to settle for Logan." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "For your gift to me, that Aine that I can hear singing in your blood, I will Wickerman your mother for all the pain she brought you, and I will give your father to the Wild Hunt that her sacrifice will call up."

"McCullen!" Stokes voice was loud. "What the hell?" She moved up next to the smaller woman and looked down at me. She was sweating and a lock of hair had escaped her helmet band and had fallen across her face. I could hear boots approaching and Meek's voice, but couldn't make out what he was saying.

Aine jerked back from Stokes and I could see her clearly in the dim light as she looked to my left, her smile gone and her lower lip trembling. "I was trying to give Corporal Stillwater first aid, he'd had a seizure, when the prisoner broke free and knocked me down. He was trying to strangle Corporal Stillwater when I managed to get Stillwater's boot knife and cut his throat before he could strangle Corporal Stillwater." Aine's voice was shaking, her words fast and tumbling over one another. Her lower lip trembled and two tears spilled from her eyes. "Silent takedown, Specialist."

"Get out of the way," Nancy snapped, coming into my vision. Aine nodded shyly and got up. She moved to the side, burying her face against Stokes' shoulder and starting to softly cry. Nagle squatted down next to me, filling my vision. "Can you speak, Ant?"

"Get me on my fucking feet," I snarled, reaching up and grabbing my shoulder.

She put her hand on my chest, pressing me against the floor. "Not until I check you out. Your pupil was blown."

The memory of Aine breathing into my mouth made my stomach roil. The bitch had contaminated me, used something that should have been in the dustbin of history. I told myself it wasn't what she had done that had strength returning to my limbs, that made the pain recede, that had lit a fire inside of me. That what she had done was old ritual that didn't actually do anything, that was just myth and superstition.

Except my skull felt better than it had since the back of my head had cracked against the edge of the CQ desk.

"Fuck that, get me up, we gotta see if we can call for extraction." I brushed her hand away and sat up.

"Do you feel dizzy? Sick to your stomach?" she asked.

I did, but my stomach churning had nothing to do with my head injury and everything with the memory of Aine exhaling into my mouth. "No. My shoulder hurts, and I've got a headache, but other than that I'm fine."

She showed me my helmet, raising one eyebrow at me. The cover was torn, and I could see where there was a pockmark in the top. I'd taken a round directly to the top of the damn thing, but the webbing and pad inside the helmet had done its job and kept the helmet from breaking my skull when the kinetic energy slammed it onto the top of my head.

"Give me a sitrep," I ordered, struggling to my feet. I put out one hand and steadied myself on the bench. Nancy frowned, but didn't tell me to sit down.

"We ended up engaging a total of ten of them. The additional soldiers were in the secure items area and searching upstairs. We found a gear cache containing climbing equipment and other equipment, and Bomber is checking them out," Nancy told me. I nodded. Bomber had been talking about reclassifying when his reenlistment date came up, switching to Military Intelligence, and had been doing correspondence courses. Of course, he'd also been talking about ETSing as well as changing MOS's to mechanics.

When his reup date came, the DoD gave him the choice of sticking with NBC Warfare or getting the fuck out, citing the ever popular "understrength MOS" and the standard "mission essential" phrase they gave us when they were lubing up our ass cracks for the typical Uncle Sam deep dicking that seemed to define our lives.

"Wounded?" I asked as Lanks was carried around the corner. Her hand was pressed to her stomach and her face was pale.

"Two. Lanks took two to the gut, but her vest stopped them," Nancy said. "Johnson's down, took one in the throat, one in the face, and one in the shoulder." She shook her head. "He was bled out before I could do anything."

She didn't show it, but I knew it hurt her to lose Johnson. Sure, I didn't know him, and I doubted that she did either, since he was in a different mag than us and worked out at Cerebus, but he was still one of us.

Echoes of last month.

Meeks was rubbing his chest as he came up to Nagle. "I took a hit, hurts to breathe," he said.

"Sit down," Nagle said.

"I'm going to see what Bomber's figured out," I said, walking away. Not from Nagle, not from our wounded, but from Aine.

...fucking bitch. you contaminated me...

I lit a cigarette to get the coppery taste out of my mouth and maybe push the burning feeling out of lungs. It had to be all in my head, had to be psychosomatic, but the tingling burning feeling in my lungs had started when Aine had exhaled into my mouth and was slowly spreading through my chest.

Bomber was kneeling down next to one of the dead, going through their pockets and stacking the contents in neat piles. Cigarettes, a lighter, folded papers, money, wallets, junk that people collected in their pockets without meaning to. He lifted up the guy's arm and sniffed at the dead man's cuff, leaning back, inhaling deeply a few time, and then repeated it.

"What do we know?" I asked him, squatting down next to him. The dead man was blond, fair skinned, his open staring eyes were brown, and he had acne. His jaw was strong, he was clean-shaven except for a moustache that was within US Army regs.

sorry, dude, but you knew the risks same as I did when you put on the uniform

"We got them all, brother. McCullen was right, there were only six in the main room. There were three more down in the secure area under the motorpool who came out to back them up, two who stayed down there that we flushed out with a grenade, and five upstairs that came down to act as backup. Those ones tried to exit out the back door and the Claymore King and Aine set up took out three of them, one got out uninjured but it looks like he ran into the pig, the other bled out before we could pause long enough to make sure he got first aid." He shook his head. "We lost Johnson when the second wave tried to flank us. Lanks caught two in the abdomen but her vest stopped them," Bomber told me. He had a notch missing from his right ear that was dribbling blood down his cheek and onto the shoulder of his Kevlar vest. "Stokes and King are recovering the Claymores, I'm going to bring them back with us so we can add them to our assets." He shook his head again. "It's a team of at least thirty, brother. A full Vympel strike team based on the fact that they sent a Soviet Colonel out with them." He waved toward where Levins was dragging bodies over and lining them up. "This group has a Colonel and a Major with it, which means the Major we killed was a subgroup leader. We're facing possibly up to company strength, which means we're being hit by pre-conflict strength."

He put his hand on my left shoulder and squeezed. "We've taken down around half of them." He shook his head once more. "I'm pretty sure we still have their heavy weapons specialist and assassination teams, since I'm pretty sure we took a good part of their command and intelligence sections."

Bomber rocked back on his heels, and held out his hand for the cigarette I had in my mouth. I dug out my pack and Zippo as he took the last two drags off the cigarette and rolled the cherry and tobacco out of it. While I lit them, he crushed out the cherry that had dropped to the concrete and put the field-stripped butt in his pocket. He took the one I handed him.

"Thanks, man." He nodded at the body in front of him. "You don't see them shitting themselves in the movies, huh?"

"Nope," I told him. "You sure they're Vympel?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I thought they might be Alpha, but Vympel does more mountaineering training and where Alpha is more their general purpose, Vympel is usually assigned targets." He took a deep drag. "Alpha's more like Special Forces, Vympel strike teams are more like the Rangers or the SEALs."

Meeks came up behind us. "Nagle says we need to evac ASAP." He coughed. "Goddamn my chest hurts."

"Yeah, probably popped a rib. Hurts like a bitch, don't it?" Bomber grinned, reading a piece of paper. "Goddamn it, just a note from someone full of love and shit like that." He shook his head. "It's easier when you don't think of them as having lives like you."

"You can read that?" Meeks asked.

"Yeah. Was going to reclassify as MI." Bomber looked up. "Plus, I'm a fucking genius."

Hearing him say that with his Texas accent made me grin.

Stokes came limping up with King, who was still packing the pig. The belt was pretty short, maybe thirty rounds hanging from it. Both of them had Claymore bags around their neck. Both had snow all over them.

"What's the plan, Corporal?" King asked me, stopping about two paces away. He wet a finger and touched the barrel, rubbing the barrel and smiling. "Cold enough outside that it cooled this bitch right down."

"We'll evac back through the tunnels. We've got wounded, outside temp is dropping, wind's probably picking up, and it's snowing," I told him. "Lanks took two to the gut, which compromised her diaphragm, and Meeks there took one to the chest, compromising his breathing." I shook my head. "Air up here is thin enough, they're going to have trouble breathing, and exertion is going to make it worse."

I stood up, slapping Bomber on the top of the helmet. "See what intel you can gather. King, you're with me, we'll crack the tunnels. Stokes, help Levins stack the bodies." Stokes gave me a middle finger salute with a smile. "After that, get a stretcher, I don't want to leave Johnson's body behind."

King and I headed to the main office so we could access the stairs down to the secure area. The motorpool had its own armory, its own NBC locker, everything they'd need in case the guys who worked in the motorpool got cut off from the barracks. Why the whole thing had been built that way was weird as hell.

I'd talked to more than a few people in other units, wrote letters to guys and gals I'd been in AIT with, and the only one who had a unit put together as weird as mine was Vencilla, who was working out at a place nicknamed Red Rocket out in Ohio that was a repurposed ICBM first strike facility.

While we were heading down the stairs I wondered, not for the first time, if 2/19th and Red Rocket represented an experiment or a paradigm shift in how NBC Warfare was being approached. It didn't matter, nobody asked an E-4 about shit.

When we hit the small room at the bottom of the stairs, I ignored the two dead men and moved over to the door to the War Fighter tunnels. One glance at the access panel and I cursed, punching the wall.

"What?" King asked from where he'd just lifted up the legs of one of the men and started to drag him toward the stairs.

"They tried to bypass the fucking access panel and now it's fucked," I told him, pointing at the access panel. Someone had pulled the keypad and magnetic strip reader off, exposing the wires. "I swear to God, Hollywood's turned everyone into goddamn morons."

"How so?" he asked while I looked at what remained. I wasn't sure if the damage to the circuit board was from what the Spetz did or the grenade blast, but I was pretty sure that I couldn't repair it. I knew basic electronic repair, hell, it was part of my job and two weeks of training in AIT, so we could do field repairs on certain weaponry, but the damaged access panel was beyond anything I could do.

"Everything thinks that the power to the door routes through this panel," I said, moving over to the other guy and squatting down to grab his boots. "They think you just have to figure out which wires to twist together and the juice goes straight to the door and opens it." I shook my head, dragging the guy away from where he'd been thrown against the motorpool Arms Room cage door. "The controls send the signal to the mechanism inside. If you hotwire it, you just fry out the controls inside and lock the fucker."

"So no War Fighter tunnels?" King asked as we drug the bodies up the stairs. "Goddamn it. Stillwater, we've got a major problem if we're going outside."

The guy's helmet fell off and bounced down the steps. I heaved him up a few more steps and glared at the body when the rifle that he'd been holding in his hands bounced back down the steps.

"What's that?" I said, irritated at the dead guy. He kept dropping shit, he stank because of the load of shit in his drawers, and he was heavy.

"That weird noise?" King said. "The one right before Tandy took Needlemeyer?"

"You mean him laughing at us?"

"Yeah."

"What about it?" I asked, managing to pull the guy off the stairs and starting to drag him out of the room into the main bay.

"Yeah, me and Stokes heard it when we were recovering the Claymores," he told me.

"Goddamn it." One of the blowers above us kicked on with the scream of a bad bearing, there was a grinding noise and a loud 'pop' before sparks rained down from it and it went silent. Another one exploded, flames shooting out and the case falling to the concrete floor.

Bomber was scooping up the stuff he'd taken off the dead bodies and stuffing it into the fag-bag that held grenades. He looked up at me. "We gotta get the hell out of here, right now." He pointed up at one of the windows above the bay doors. I glanced up and could see snow blowing through the shattered window. "The grenade blew it out."

"Hurry up, I'll get everything together," I told him. He nodded, moving to the two bodies King and I had pulled upstairs. "King, cover him. Levins, swap out the pig's barrel, discard the used one here."

"Why?" Levins asked.

"It was already really hot, then exposed to sub-zero temperatures right after, it might be warped now," King said. "We've got plenty of spare barrels back at Group, let's not take the chance."

I headed back to Nancy. She was loading up Johnson's body on the stretcher. Someone had put his cold weather mask over his face and a cravat over his throat. I could tell by the blood down the side of his face that the cold weather mask was hiding whatever damage the bullet had done, the same way the cravat was hiding his throat.

Aine was telling Lanks to breathe slowly, holding the other woman's hand and patting it. Lanks' LBE belt was loosened up, her Kevlar vest was gaped open, and she was sagging against the bench. Meeks was panting, holding onto his chest.

"You get the War Fighter tunnels open?" Nancy asked, glancing up at me.

I shook my head. "No, the access panel's shot. Looked like they tried to hotwire it."

"That shit doesn't work. Did the security charge go off?" she asked. I shook my head. "So we have to go overland?"

"Yeah," I told her. I glanced at Johnson's body. "We'll take him with us." I moved over to the CUC-V. "I'm gonna see if I can raise the LT."

She nodded, going back to piling Johnson's gear on top of him. I pulled the door all the way open and climbed up inside. The keys weren't in the ignition, but that didn't matter. I hit the power to the radio and watched as the lights went on. I changed the frequency setting and picked up the mic.

"Echo-Five Alpha, this is Echo-Five Actual, do you read? Over," I said. There was another flare of lightning and an explosion of thunder. I could hear the screech of static even over the thunder and had a sudden mental image of lighting arcing out of the radio and frying me in the seat of a fucking Chevy Blazer. I tried again and got nothing but static. Frustrated, I started dialing through the post frequencies, hoping to find something, anything.

The only thing I got was a woman repeating numbers through static, a country music station full of static, and an evangelist screaming about sin with a Mid-West accent clear as day.

Fucking ionosphere bullshit.

I grabbed the power lead and pulled it out, tossing it under the seat before climbing out. I glanced at Nancy, who was telling Meeks and Lanks to go slow, that they'd be in the middle of the tether, and moved to the other CUC-V's. At each of them, I pulled the power lead out and threw it under the seat before coming back. Bomber joined me at the one of the middle trucks, pulling his helmet back on and snapping the chin-strap.

"Should we use a vehicle?" Bomber asked, waving at one of the 5-tons.

I shook my head. "We'll never make it," I told him. "We'll have to go on foot."

He nodded.

"We're heading out on foot. The War Fighter tunnels are a no-go," I told them. Aine smiled sunnily, looking at me out from under the brim of her helmet. "Get dressed." We were silent as we pulled on our parkas, took off our boots and hung them from our rucks so we could put on our Mickey Mouse boots, then put back on our facial protection and trigger mittens.

"Let's go. King, you're on drag, make sure we don't lose anyone," I told him. He nodded, dropping back and clipping his D-ring to the tether. "Blue lens." I clicked on my flashlight, the blue circle shining on the door. There were more clicks and other circle joined mine.

Outside the temperature had dropped noticeably, the wind had picked up, and between the fog, the darkness, and the snow visibility had dropped to nothing. Luckily, I could see the flare Stokes had dropped at the top of the steps that led down to the lower motorpool.

The idea had been a good one, and I was going to definitely tell the LT that Stokes' idea had probably saved our ass.

We went slow, twice the purple bloom of lightning and crash of thunder happening simultaneously. Both times the hair on my body raised up a split second before the lightning flared and the thunder almost knocked me down.

Through the fence and we waited until Levins and Stokes set down the stretcher and caught their breath, while Bomber cut the zip-ties, let the fencing fall into place, and used three zipties to close it back up.

There was no sense in trying to tell the others to be careful when we moved down the incline. The wind was screaming, and if I'd tried to speak the wind would whip away my words like I'd never tried to speak.

We were crossing the street, only a couple dozen paces from the barracks when it happened.

The hair on my body stood up. I could taste sharp ozone on my back teeth where my fillings were, and the snap of my helmet grew hot.

The world turned purple and the following detonation of thunder was more than a sound, it was earth shattering, it was all consuming, it was beyond anything else. I was thrown to the ground, convulsing as I lost control of my body. A weapon cooked off, the gunfire almost drowned out by the thunder.

With a groan I rolled over, pushing myself to my feet. My ears were ringing as I fumbled for the tether and began crawling back. Bomber clonked his helmet against mine, his eyes wild behind his goggles and cold weather mask. I pointed behind him and he nodded, turning to crawl back to check on the next person in line.

My muscles hurts and my right shoulder was burning in pain. I started moving forward, hoping the tether wasn't hung up and that King was alive, conscious, and paying attention. When I hit the end he was supposed to feed me more line, but if he was alive or unconscious I'd hit the end pretty quickly.

When I hit the end I jerked twice. I counted to two and tugged again, getting slack. My head still buzzing, I check for the red of Stokes' flare. I was glad I did, I was about to head in the wrong direction, moving parallel to the barracks instead of toward it.

Five more steps and my body hair stood up again. I dove to the ground as the world turned purple again and the thunder pounded on me. It wasn't sound, it was a physical thing that hit me like a hammer. Burning pain filled me as I hit the ground and I convulsed again. I managed to roll over and got to my feet. It took a moment to spot Stokes' flare, but I found it, and started staggering toward the barracks.

A few more steps and the tingling hit again. The world became purple light the hammering of pressure as I dove forward, my head slamming into a solid surface that made sparks appear in my vision. I fell next to the flare, convulsing, then rolling away from it as the burning feeling faded. I pawed at the wall, finding the door handle, and pressed the thumb release, pulling hard against the wind.

It was locked.

The goddamn door was locked.

And we were stuck outside.