"We learned to take what we could get for comfort. Each other,

bad jokes, alcohol, or just the knowledge that you had someone

to talk to when it got dark and cold. And maybe, just maybe,

when the blood was spilled and froze on the tile, someone

would have your back. Cold comfort is still comfort."

Chapter Five

2/19th Special Weapons Group

Restricted Area, Alfenwehr West Germany

Late Winter-January 1986

Day 10 of Repairs

Day 2 of the Second Incident

0800 Hours

I woke up when the windup alarm clock on the dresser started banging, opening my eyes to see Nancy's face in front of mine. Her eyelids were just starting to flutter, and I waited until her eyes opened to kiss the tip of her nose. Her body was warm against mine, but my backside was chilled from where I'd ended up pressed against the cinderblock wall while we slept.

"Morning," I smiled.

"Blech, go brush your teeth." She grimaced, then laughed and kissed the tip of my nose.

I grunted and sat up, looking down to admire her body. She twisted around to lay on her back and put her hands behind her head, arcing her back slightly to thrust her heavy breasts at me. I laughed, squeezed one, then let go so I could carefully turn around to face the end of the bed. She pulled the blankets away and snuggled down into them as I climbed down out of the bed.

"Hey, kill that alarm, will you?" she asked.

"I got it, ya lazy bitch," Bomber drawled from the darkness that our little nightlight wasn't having much luck in holding back. I saw him move over by the dresser and heard his hand slap against the top of the alarm clock.

"Shit, it's zero eight already," he bitched. "Damn, it's freezing in here again." He kicked the radiator cover twice, making a crackling sound. He grinned when there was a sudden gurgle of moving water again.

"Yeah, but we've got power." I jerked a thumb toward the stereo, which was still lit up.

"Zero eight? Fuck!" Nancy blurted. The blankets rustled and I heard her bare feet slap the floor. Before I could take two steps forward to cut her off, she slid past me, elbowing me in the stomach, and I heard the bathroom door slam.

"Gotta be faster than that." Bomber laughed.

I shook my head, laughing with him. "Yeah, watch this." I went over to the bathroom door, the shower coming on while I was still in the short hallway our wall lockers were in. I slowly opened the bathroom door and slipped inside. Steam was billowing out around the shower curtain and the room was warming up rapidly.

I slipped into the shower, hoping to surprise her, but her arms went around my neck and she stood on her tiptoes to kiss me under the hot water. When we broke apart she nipped at my lower lip before letting go of me and leaning back so her shoulders were braced against the wall.

"Soap me up, Ant," she demanded, holding out a bar of Irish Spring.

Her skin was hot from the water, her permanent tan, courtesy of a Hispanic grandmother, was quickly covered in water and soap suds. She closed her eyes and luxuriated in the way I dug my fingers into the thick muscle covering her body, working at knots. After a while she lifted one leg and wrapped it around my waist, pulling me close as one hand moved down to our waists.

In the end we separated and she washed me down, scrubbing at me. Afterwards she watched me rinse off, running her fingers across the scar across the muscle at the top of my left shoulder blade and humming tunelessly to herself.

"You got lucky, Ant," she told me, kissing the scar.

"How so?" I asked after I pulled my head out from under the showerhead.

"If he'd angled it into you instead of bringing it straight down, it would have punctured the top of your lung instead of sliding along the shoulder blade," she told me. She put the soap in the soap dish and pushed me forward so the water slid down my back. I just shrugged.

"Hey, hurry the hell up! It's already half past!" Bomber yelled.

Nancy laughed and pulled us both out, grabbing a towel before opening the door and tugging us both into the short hallway. The hot water on our skin steamed as Bomber gave us both the finger and hurried into the bathroom. We hadn't bothered to turn off the water, the massive tanks in the basement holding literally thousands of gallons.

"Dammit! Why do you leave it so hot?" he yelled at us.

Nancy gave me an impish grin, shoved the towel at me, then vanished into the bathroom as soon as I took it from her. She shut the door as she started to slide past the shower curtain and into the shower with Bomber.

It was just the way we were.

I dried off quickly, opening the door to toss the towel in the sink, then opened my military wall locker so I could put on my uniform. The three drawer chest at the bottom held my boxers, T-shirts, and socks, all properly rolled up and lined up dress right dress according to the layout diagram taped on the door.

By the time the two of them came out, they only had about ten minutes to get dressed, and I sat on the dresser, smoking a cigarette and nursing my liquid breakfast, a bottle of Tucher hefe wiessen, while they frantically got dressed. Nancy stuck her tongue at me while she shifted her bra to get comfortable, and when she got done pulling her T-shirt over her head and started to tuck it in I stuck my tongue out at her.

When we went out into the hallway, I told them to hang on and pounded on my cousin's door, grinning when Cass answered, looking sleepy in his PT uniform.

"Formation in ten, man," I told him. "Let's go."

"You fucking suck." He groaned. "God, I'm hung over."

"Yeah yeah yeah, hurry up, man." I turned to Nancy and Bomber. "Tell the LT I'm bringing down our two lost lambs."

Bomber gave me the thumbs up, and when they walked away Nancy looped her arm through his.

My cousins came out of their rooms with five minutes to spare, and I hustled them down the hallway, our breath steaming in front of us.

"Christ, is it always this cold in here?" James asked, rubbing his hands together.

"Not in the summer," I told him. "In the winter? It can get a lot colder." The hallway was lit up bright enough I could point at the frost on the walls. "See that? Imagine it a lot thicker, and covering the ceiling and floors too. Earlier this winter there were icicles about six inches long hanging from the ceiling."

"You guys are right, this place is Hell," Cass bitched.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," I warned them. "Just hope that the dying doesn't start again."

"Dying? Who's gonna die?" James asked as we pushed through the doors of the halfway point.

I chuckled grimly, ignoring the twinge of pain in my shoulder. "We are."

"What, how?" James asked at the same time as Cass.

"What makes you think we're getting off this mountain alive? Or even surviving when the Reds roll over the hard sites?" I asked them.

"Hey, Stillwater, come on, let me out, it's cold in here and I'm locked in. Don't let me miss formation, man." A voice drifted through the door as we passed room 221.

I turned and grabbed Cass' wrist as he reached for the door handle. "Don't."

"What? Why not?" he asked.

"Come on, Stillwater, let me out." A female's voice this time that I recognized as SPC Westlin, who had taken a sniper round through the stomach out at Atlas and had died during the medevac.

"It's not real," I told them, pulling Cass along behind me.

"But I heard a voice..." Cass said.

"Follow Annie's lead, just ignore it," James told Cass.

...please don't tell anyone what happened to us, Annie, please...

"Don't fucking call me Annie," I snarled. "I'm not Annie any more."

"Man, sensitive," Cass said, nudging me in the ribs.

"You call me Annie in front of my crew, I'll break your fucking jaw, Cass," I told him. We were down to Room 209, about forty feet from the stairwell door. I stopped and turned to face him and James both. "This is not the Army you think it is," I told them. "All that bullshit you think you know, that bullshit they taught you in Basic and AIT, all the stories our family tells? That shit will get you killed out here. I've lost three of my crew in the last year, and despite the bullshit the Army told the families and wrote in the paperwork, every fucking death was hard."

They both stared at me. "If anyone else in this unit called me Annie, I'd choke their ass out. Don't call me Annie, that isn't my name anymore."

"Jeez, fine, you didn't have to go all Colonel Kurtz on us," Cass said.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," I told them, turning away and walking for the door to the stairs. "The dying hasn't started yet."

When I opened the door a scream ripped down, swirled around us, and drifted down the hallway. I looked at my two cousins and raised on eyebrow. "Like I was saying, you ain't seen nothing yet."

The stairs thudded, the iron frame shaking, as we headed down to the CQ Area. Above us there was a moaning sob, a woman's voice, which set my teeth on edge.

We made it to formation, exactly a minute early, and I pushed my two cousins into third squad, which had the fewest people in it. Sergeant Butcher gave me a dirty look, which just rolled off me. Screw him, he was only an Acting Jack while he was in Rear-D, and as soon as we got swapped back to the unit they'd make him put on his Spec-5 again since he wasn't a squad leader.

Everyone was present, including Aine, who stood next to Stokes, her uniform making her look more alluring instead of shapeless. Despite her small height, highlighted next to Stokes' massive presence, anyone who looked at her would know it wasn't a little girl wearing her mother's uniform.

She gave me the willies.

"Group, attention," the LT snapped. We all came to attention. "Squad leaders, report."

"First Squad, all members present and accounted for," Corporal Lancer said, his eyes staring above the LT.

"Second Squad, all members present and accounted for," Sergeant White stated.

"Third Squad, all members present and accounted for," Sergeant Butcher said.

"Fourth Squad, all members present and accounted for," I stated.

"At ease." We all shifted, our hands going behind our backs and our feet sliding out to shoulder width apart with the mechanical ease of something long practiced. The LT paused for a moment, obviously gathering his thoughts, his narrow angular face serious. "I have put up duty rosters at the CQ Desk as well as on the training schedule board in the Orderly Room hallway."

"Many of you are injured and, while I understand the reasoning that led to those of you who are wounded being moved up here, I cannot ascribe it to anything but poor planning due to lack of consideration of available intelligence," he was saying, and I slightly tuned him out, listening for anything important while I let my mind drift.

Despite the LT's odd cadence to his speech, I was becoming used to the way he talked; it may have been a slightly stilted rhythm, but it was comfortable after a bit. Everyone had their little idiosyncrasies, and neither my friends nor I were an exception. Bomber had his Texas drawl, Nancy had an odd slur to some of her words nobody had been able to pin down, Stokes had her East Coast accent, and I had a muddled accent from growing up all over the US on military bases.

The LT finished his briefing, telling the Duty Driver that he'd be taking my cousins to Graf and my cousins to pack their gear. I was hoping they'd get to stay but the LT didn't want them staying up on the top of the mountain without arctic survival training, not that I could blame him. Having them up there would be the same as just outright shooting them.

After the formation the LT made everyone line up, remove their boots and socks, and let Nancy check them for any cold weather injuries. A few people bitched; mostly ones that weren't used to the way 2/19th dehumanized you, but for the most part we all joked, smoked cigarettes, and considered it a nice way to sham for a little while.

Once she was done, she let the LT know that everyone looked good. She'd made checkmarks on the list she'd drawn up with some of my graph paper. I'd caught her looking over the map of the Dungeon of the Mad Hermit before I'd snatched my graph paper back from her, which irritated me more than her use of it for her chart.

She spent a little longer checking out Bomber and my feet, checking our toes to make sure that we hadn't picked up frostbite during the night. When she looked up at me she smiled at me and pushed her tongue against the inside of her mouth twice before standing up with a blank expression. She not only checked feet, toes, fingers, injuries according to profile, but listened to everyone breathe through a stethoscope. She paid attention to how well my eyes tracked by moving a penlight back and forth in front of my eyes.

"Everyone's passed, sir," she told the LT when she was done. "Richardson's lungs sound bad. Stillwater's left eye is a little off."

"What would you recommend?" the LT asked. Nagle looked surprised.

"Don't allow Richardson to be exposed to the cold air," Nagle said after a moment.

"PFC Richardson," the LT snapped out.

"Yes, sir?" Richardson asked.

"Take the rest of the day off, stay warm. Do you smoke?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Try not to or switch to menthols," he said, and then turned to Nagle. "And Stillwater?"

"No exertion, no chance to bump his head, and I prefer he didn't read," Nancy answered. He nodded.

"Is everyone that I'd marked for duty cleared for the work crews I have assigned them?"

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Excellent." He turned to us. "Check the duty schedule at the CQ Desk, break up into your work crews and or go to your place of duty. Dismissed."

On the list Nancy, Bomber, and myself were stuck up in the Third Magazine Platoon's NCO offices. I moved up to PV2 Davies, who was yawning and stretching.

"You taking my cousins to Graf?" I asked.

He shook his head. "PFC Osterhaus. He's heading up at the motor pool right now, bringing down CUC-V Sixteen." He yawned again. "I'm fucking beat."

"All right. Thanks, man," I told him. I turned to where my cousins were standing there, about ten feet from where Meeks was talking to Aine. She had reached up and had her hand on his cheek, looking at him through her eyelashes.

"Don't worry, man, we'll get them out of here and to Graf," Davies told me, mistaking the aim of my frown.

"Thanks, man. When you wake up, hit me up, we'll have a couple beers," I told him. He yawned again and waved at me as I walked over to where Bomber and Nancy were standing by the door.

Aine smiled at me, her hand having dropped from Meeks cheek to the middle of his chest. I glared at her and she lowered her head, looking at me through her too long eyelashes with her too wide green eyes.

Bomber thumped me in the chest when I walked up and I playfully thumped him back.

"What are we doing, brother?" he asked me.

"Paperwork. I gotta catch up with the paperwork on Atlas and the crew," I told him. Screw what Nancy and the LT wanted, I had a three foot high pile of paperwork to do and that meant reading.

"What'll I do while you handle that bullshit?" he asked me.

"You'll tap-dance and juggle," I said, then laughed. "I don't fucking care, just as long as you do it in the office."

"Cool." He grinned. "Time to sleep off last night's drunk."

"Let me guess, study this medical FM," Nancy said.

"Right in one, baby," I told her. She smiled at me, her brown eyes softening.

"Specialist Lanks, I wasn't sure where to put my stuff, when you're off will you show me?" Aine asked.

I snarled and yanked open the door. "Let's fucking go."

My friends followed me silently to the second floor, where we walked across the Mag Area, where we normally hung out and smoked cigarettes, opened the door to Third Magazine Office, and headed into the office.

Nancy sat down at Sergeant Ski's desk, Bomber just grabbed SGT Hallow's chair and sat down, pulling his hat out of his thigh pocket and putting it on, tugging it down over his eyes as he leaned back.

Within ten minutes I was doing paperwork, something the Army seemed to generate literal tons of, Nancy was making notes based off a training manual, and Bomber was leaned back in a chair, his soft cap pulled over his eyes, pretending to sleep so I didn't hand him any of the paperwork to do.

Lunch was MRE's, but SPC Davis told me that the LT had already made arrangements to heat up some A-Rats, so dinner was going to be lasagna, bread, and green beans with bacon bits in them. I polished off my MRE and the leftovers from Bomber's and Nagle's. Nagle hated the grape jelly and Bomber hated the cheese, but as far as I was concerned, it was all fuel for the machine.

We'd just finished throwing away the plastic and foil that the meals came in, all three of us chewing on the gum, when Stokes came up. When she went to shut the door the wind grabbed it out of her hands, causing it to slam. Bomber snorted loudly and looked around sleepily. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he dropped his chin on his chest and began going back to sleep. Stokes was limping heavily as she crossed the room, and sat down in one of the chairs, spinning a key on a little ring around her index finger.

"Guess what I get to do," she gushed with false enthusiasm.

"Masturbate till you pass out?" I guessed, not looking up from my paperwork.

"Finally take off your chastity belt and know the touch of a man?" Nancy asked.

"Gremlins in the hayloft," Bomber suggested helpfully, shifting slightly in the chair.

"No. Get serious," Stokes said. Nancy and I looked at each other, smiled, and then looked at her.

"It's the key to your heart?"

"It's the key to Alfenwehr?"

"It's so you can pound sand up your ass?"

"Someone can finally turn you on with it?"

"It unlocks your ass so monkeys can fly out of it?"

"Oh, I know, it'll open up the Temple of Doom and we can all have free heart surgery!"

"Bessie ate my shoe"

"It unlocks a safe deposit box where Hitler's brain is stored?"

"It unlocks a safe deposit where Bomber's brain is stored?"

"It unlocks the chest where you hid your virginity so you wouldn't lose it?"

"Fuck you guys," Stokes grumped, dropping the key on Sergeant Walls' desk. "How the hell do you guys keep from accidentally blowing up Atlas I'll never know."

"It ain't from a lack of trying," I told her.

"We're just missing a key. Surprise, you have one," Nancy offered.

"Enough about the fucking key," Stokes snapped.

"Stuff your tampon in, Stokes, shit," Nancy snapped back. "No wonder you date humorless dicks like William and Cobb, you don't have a goddamn sense of humor."

Stokes looked hurt, and I glared at Nancy, hoping that she'd suddenly develop telepathy so she could understand how hard I was thinking at her that Stokes had broken up with my brother the day before.

"Since you aren't with a humorless dick any more, how about you put your nipple pads in your bra, quit bitching, and laugh with us for a while, huh Stokes?" Nancy asked. She smiled and tossed Stokes a small flask of Wild Turkey. "Have a drink and relax."

Stokes looked wary as she opened the flask and took a drink off of it. I shrugged and went back to my paperwork.

"...goddamn it, sis, you left the chicken coop open again," Bomber mumbled. Nancy made soft clucking noises and Stokes smothered giggles as Bomber kept bitching in his sleep. Nancy smiled at Stokes and picked back up her medial FM, lifting it up in front of her face so she could read it. I saw out of the corner of my eye Nancy slowly and deliberately open her legs, then slide one hand down over her BDU clad crotch and start slowly rubbing and squeezing. I glanced up without looking away from my paperwork and saw Stokes blushing.

But she didn't look away.

Life went on like that for about an hour, Stokes pretending to ignore Nancy and Nancy teasing Stokes while Bomber mumbled in his sleep, dreaming of Texas, and I kept working on the paperwork that had piled up.

The phone rang and I snatched it up on the second ring. The first could be crossed wires or just the weather, a second ring meant that there was actually someone on the line. If I waited till the third ring they might hear four rings on their end and then I'd get an ass chewing.

"2/19th Special Weapons Group, Third Magazine Platoon, Corporal Stillwater speaking. How can I help you, sir or ma'am?" I recited.

"This is Lieutenant James, Corporal. I am just performing a quick headcount. Are your two subordinates accounted for?" the LT asked.

"Yes, sir." Simple answer, I could see them both. Bomber was snoring and Nancy was still engrossed in her textbook.

"Did Specialist Stokes arrive?" he asked.

I looked over at Stokes, who was taking another drink out of the flask and holding onto a folded over Penthouse Letters that Nancy had tossed her. She was obviously reading, tilting the flask so she didn't lose sight of the words.

"Yes, sir. She's right in front of me," I told him.

"Excellent, Corporal. Close of business formation today is at seventeen-thirty. However, you and your squad have been working all day as well as being on heavy profile. I don't want you to overexert yourselves," Overexert ourselves? Bomber had slept all day, Nancy had done nothing but rib me and Stokes and read her manuals, all Stokes has done is read porn, and all I'd done is paperwork. Overexert? "so you can release your subordinates from their duties at seventeen thirty hours or before if you feel they have completed their duties for the day. Dinner will be served at eighteen hundred."

Thank you, Jeeves, that will be all, went through my mind, but my mouth was smart enough to say: "Roger that, sir."

"James, clear," was all he finished with, hanging up. I shrugged and hung up the phone as Nancy looked at me.

"Well?" she asked, setting aside her FM and standing up with a wicked smile on her face.

"The LT said for me to tell you to quit being a lazy bitch and get back to work," I told her, looking back down at my paperwork.

"Pfft, no blowjob for you," she said, sitting back down and picking up her FM again. "Dammit, I lost my place."

"That's what you get for being cock hungry," I told her, checking off several boxes and initialing the fact I'd checked them off.

"But I'm huuuuuungry," she whined. "How come Stokes gets to read porn and I have to read a boring manual about medical crap?"

"Because God watched you touch yourself last night," I told her. I looked up, not moving my head, just raising my eyes so that Stokes wouldn't catch me looking at her. She was blushing slightly, staring at Nancy.

"Pfft, and I'm the pervert?" she asked. "He watched the whole time."

"I told you to stay off my horse, Becky," Bomber mumbled. Nancy made a soft neighing noise and Bomber mumbled at his sister to leave his horse alone.

"Hey, Stokes, what are you supposed to be actually doing?" Nancy asked, bored with fucking with Bomber.

Stokes jerked like someone had shocked her. She looked flustered for a moment, then blushed and sat up straight. "I was told to inventory the medical stocks up here and give you a copy of the inventory sheet." She set down the Penthouse Letters and picked up the key.

"Fuck it. I'll wake up Sleeping Beauty, you unlock the locker, we'll knock that shit out," Nancy said. She spun her chair around and kicked Bomber's chair. "Wake up, pervert, we're tired of hearing about your sheep based kinky fantasies."

"Wuzzat?" Bomber said, jerking awake. "Sheep? We don't have sheep. That's Gunderson Ranch."

Nancy laughed. "Come on, high speed, Stokes needs our help to inventory the medical supplies."

Bomber stood up, stretched and yawned, then nodded. "Sure. Why not."

"We're off at seventeen thirty, chow at eighteen hundred," I told them. All three nodded. I went back to my paperwork. Months of incident reports, inventory reports, requests for information months old that I'd never seen but had sat in my inbox on my desk the whole time instead of being sent out to Atlas. Most of the paperwork had been destroyed in our rampage, so I had to completely redo the paperwork, reconstructing a lot of the data from the copies that had been in the secure cabinets. That meant making a copy of the secure storage copies and then having Nancy run the packets of them back down to secure storage and getting the documents I needed after the packet I started working on.

The injuries were the hardest, a litany of broken bones, contusions, lacerations, concussions, sickness, and pain. My name appeared more than a few times, and I'd started keeping a checklist of the number of times someone had been injured. Operation Copper Window turned out to be the worst, where we'd been running on no sleep, no food, and stumbling with exhaustion the last 72 hours of a seventy-five day operation. Two hundred six injury write-ups in seventy-five days between sixteen people total, each of them requiring me to write up another incident report. The majority of them were repeat injuries, people re-injuring themselves because they hadn't been given any profiles or time off.

In each case I put the blame solely where it belonged. Chief Henley, a sorry excuse for a human being that earned his medals off the backs of his troops, working them like he was in charge of an early industrial age sweatshop full of orphans. He won a lot of awards for 'performance above and beyond the 'call of duty' but I could see the actual cost in the paperwork I'd worked my way up to.

My crew's blood and pain.

He'd raked in two Meritorious Service Medals on our fucking work. Specifically for "Service above and beyond normal duty in the refitting of FSTS-317, tireless efforts, and a work ethic that gave credit to the entire Battalion."

In other words, he worked us like slaves, belittled us, starved us, denied us medical care, and got fucking medals. As far as I was concerned the red and white ribbon signified the broken bones and spilt blood of Atlas, and he mocked me and my entire crew walking around in his Class-A's all the fucking time showing those medals off.

One of these days, I was gonna stab his fat ass right through his MSMs.

After working my way through most of Copper Window I glanced up at the clock, seeing it was almost sixteen hundred. A glance at the window showed me nothing but snow whipping against them and the fact that the sun was starting to go down. I stubbed out my cigarette and leaned back in my chair, looking at my three friends.

"You guys go ahead and take off, I'll see you at dinner," I told them. Their faces lit up. "No reason for you three to hang out here, since you're not really doing anything but keeping me company."

The words weren't all the way out of my mouth before John was out the door, the double doors slowly closing behind him. Stokes looked at the medical equipment they had spread out in front of the locker and then at Nancy. Nancy made a shooing motion at her and Stokes' Amazon ass was out the door before Nancy's laugh finished echoing in the room.

"Lemme put this stuff away, Ant," she told me.

"No problem," I told her. "Thanks for not leaving it for me to do."

"No problem, baby," she said. I went back to working. The reports for Operation Thursday Brunch were next. Talk about a stupid fucking name for moving nuclear artillery rounds around. But hell, nobody asked me shit.

"Hey, Ant, psst." Nancy's voice made me look up.

She was standing there without her shirt and bra on, the chill in the air making her nipples stand up. I knew my eyes were wide as she blew a kiss to me. She put her hands together below her belt and squeezed her breasts between her arms, making them lift up, and laughed wickedly.

"Come watch me work, Ant." She smiled.

I set aside the paperwork claiming that I'd moved something besides nuclear weapons and stood up. I walked over, picked up the flask Stokes had left on the desk, and unscrewed the cap, watching Nancy squat down and start packing IV tubing away. She messed with her boots, and then went back to packing more of the sterile medical equipment back into the boxes.

After a few moments she stood up, and without a word, kicked her boots off, dropped her pants, and stepped out of them, leaving her gloriously naked.

"Just keep watching," she told me, looking back. I nodded, swallowing. She squatted back down and leaned forward. After watching her for a moment, I hopped off the desk and started to reach for her.

"Uh-uh. No touchie feelie," she told me without turning around. "Be a good boy and sit back up on the desk."

I nodded, even though she couldn't see me, and hopped back up on the desk, taking a long swallow off the Wild Turkey. I smoked a cigarette as she finished packing, holding it over the garbage can and crushing the cherry out on the side of the liquor bottle before field stripping the butt into the garbage can and putting it in my pocket.

She stood up and shut the wall locker, locking it and threading a thin metal seal into the hasp. Once she was done, she turned around and walked over to me, standing in only her OD green socks in front of me, her dogtags visible between her breasts.

"Give me your hand," she told me. I held out my hand and she took it, lifting it up to kiss the scarred knuckles before lowering it to between her legs.

"Gently, Ant, gently," she cautioned me, her grip shifting on my hand so she could guide me into what she wanted. She stood there, legs open, one hand holding tight to my uniform, the other hand eventually coming up to wrap around the back of my neck and pull me against her breasts as I kept moving my fingers. Sometimes on instinct, other times knowing what she wanted, and sometimes on her soft suggestions. I used my other hand to hold her hand behind her back. When she pleaded I twisted her arm, and she gasped sharply before she sagged against me, her teeth grinding as I held her up.

When she was finished she pushed me back, sliding onto my lap. I wrapped my arms around her and held her as we kissed.

"My boy, mine," she said playfully, kissing my face. "I saved you, your father said that makes you mine." She dug in my pocket and pulled out my cigarettes. "Light us ones, will you?" I nodded, and silently lit one for her and one for me before putting away my cigarettes and lighter.

"You need to trim your nails," she told me, leaning against me and exhaling smoke into the air. I chuckled and she slapped my leg playfully. "It's not funny." She giggled, ruining it, and we sat silently.

After our cigarettes were done, she stood up and I watched as she dressed. She smiled at me the whole time.

"I'm gonna go wander around, see what's up," she told me.

"Good idea," I answered. I sighed, straightened up, and hopped off the desk. I walked back to mine. "I've got like three months' worth the paperwork still to catch up on." I stirred the paper around with two wet fingers, taking a petty joy in what I was doing.

"Need me to run down and get more copies?" she asked.

"Naw. I've got this." I looked up. "Go, have fun. Love you."

"I know." Nancy grinned at me, blew me a kiss, and left with her medical textbook under her arm and a flirtatious wiggle of her BDU clad butt before the door shut.

The temperature seemed to drop pretty quickly, but I knew it was all in my head, just a product of being alone in a room that usually contained almost a dozen other people. When the small flask of Wild Turkey ran out I got up from behind my desk and went over to my brother's, pulling open the bottom drawer and pulling a bottle of rum out from under the paperwork. Bacardi Light & Dry, what he usually drank. Personally, I'd have preferred a good bottle of bourbon, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

The rum still tasted good as I took a deep pull off of the bottle and went back to typing up my paperwork. I hated the carbon paper triplicate forms, since I had to double-check if the paperwork was still aligned properly. More than once I had to pull it out and completely redo it when the pink, yellow, or blue pages got misaligned. I couldn't just photocopy them, the colors actually mattered.

Stupid Cold War Bullshit.

The stack of paperwork slowly went down, same with the level in the Bicardi bottle. The warmth was enough to make the knowledge of the chill outside the windows fade, and the next couple of hours went by pretty quickly.

Satisfied I'd done what I could, I put the bottle in the middle drawer of my desk and stood up, intending on heading downstairs to grab some food. I about jumped out of my skin when the door burst open and Nancy stood there with an OD green tray piled high with food. She brought it to me with a smile, plonking the trays on my desk and sitting on the edge. Nothing special, but it was hot.

Hungry, I pulled the tray forward and began shoveling down the food while Nancy watched with a smile on her face. She pulled open the drawers of my desk till she found the bottle of rum, then took a long swig off of it while I finished up my lasagna, having already garbaged down the side dishes.

"The LT sent me to check on you. He verbally reprimanded me for leaving you alone, so I got you a plate and brought it up," she told me when I was done eating the main meal. "We might have a problem again, but I don't know." I raised one eyebrow before going back to tucking in the last of the food. "Marshden's missing, he didn't show up to formation, and the LT has people sweeping the barracks right now."

"Aw shit," I groaned, pushing the tray away. "When was the last time anyone saw him?"

"This morning at formation. Lancer gave him the day off after lunch since his ankle was hurting badly enough he was having problems walking." Marshden had broken his ankle at Graf stepping in a small hole while he'd been charging through the mud and slush while running drills for QRF deployment. The doctors had to put three pins into it to put it back together. "The LT thinks he couldn't have gone far, his clothing is still in his room, along with his cold weather gear," Nancy said, holding her out for the bottle. When I handed it to her, she took a long drink before continuing. "Ol' Teflon James seems a bit worried about Marshden's stupid ass."

"How do you know his cold weather gear is still there?" I asked, finishing off the 'chocolate' pudding.

"He had me and Sergeant Butcher search the room. Well, Butcher bravely stood in the hallway and sent me into the room, the chickenshit little bitch." She lit two cigarettes and handed me one. "What do you think happened to him?"

A grunt was my only answer and she shook her head. "No, I don't think it was him, there was no blood and the boards over his windows were intact."

"Still could have taken him somewhere else," I argued. "He was in the barracks last night."

She shook her head. "Doesn't feel right, ya know?" I nodded. The barracks felt cold and dark, but it lacked that certain feeling that it had a few months ago. I didn't feel like something was stalking me, just out of my vision, taunting me.

"What does the LT think?"

"He said that more than likely either Marshden went outside for some reason or someone lured him outside, which is why he's having the barracks searched." Nancy snorted. "He's ordering that the barracks be locked down." She reached out and picked up the phone on my desk. "Oh, the phones are all down but the internal lines and the V Corps line and the LT already called it in that we've got commo loss."

My blood ran cold at the thought of the lines being down. "So he transferred control over the main company?" I asked and she nodded. "And we're going to be doing commo checks through V Corps instead of the normal checks?" Another nod. "That means we're all alone up here again."

"Yeah," she said soberly.

"We've got someone missing. There's a blizzard again. Bomber and I are wrecked," I added.

"Yeah," she said.

"And Aine is still here."

"Yup."

"Shit."

"Yup."