"If God had intended me to be good looking, he'd have made
me a girl. I'm a boy, so my face is just to keep the front of
my skull warm and that's it."

Chapter Two
2/19th Special Weapons Group
Restricted Area, Western Germany
Late Winter
1830 Hours, 22 January 1986
Day 9 of Repairs
Day 1 of the Second Incident

I stepped out of the shower and turned to face the sink with the mirror above it. From the mirror, a reddish-blond guy stared back. Ugly, with a scar at his hairline above his left eye, scars on both lips. On my right shoulder was a thick upraised scar, still forming, with staples still stuck in the flesh. I'd lost a lot of weight and it showed.

I put my hands on the sink and leaned toward my reflection, squinting and glaring at it. "You are a waste of a human being. Nobody likes you. You are worthless beyond the fact that you will die so that someone better than you will survive. You will never be worth anything more than whatever good your death can do. Nobody will ever love you, everyone can barely tolerate you, and you deserve nothing good," I told my reflection. "You will die alone, and nobody will know or care that you are gone. You are just a boy."

With a last snarl I turned away, grabbing a towel to wrap around my waist and my glasses from where I'd left them on the sink. The brown towel wasn't too uncomfortable, not that I gave a damn about comfort, but the glasses gave me back my sight.

The bathroom door squeaked when I opened it up so I could step into the small hallway from the room door to the main part of the room. On the right and left of the hallway were wall lockers for us to store our civilian clothing, valuable, military uniforms, and TA-50. Beyond that little hallway was the room I shared with two friends. A room that had been stripped down to nothing by a maniac and had its windows shattered by people pushed beyond the brink of caring about survival.

Plywood covered the windows that we had broken, just like we'd put up in every other room in the massive barracks. The heater was pinging softly, heat radiating from it to bring the room up to a sweltering 65 degrees Fahrenheit that had all three of us stripped down to mitigate what felt like high temperatures to us. The only thing on the shelves were the AD&D books I'd bought from the PX in Freiburg and a crystal Porsche that Nagle had bought me for Christmas from God knew where. There were some posters I'd pulled out of a Fangoria magazine and a cloth wall hanging of Eddie from Iron Maiden's The Trooper hanging over the desk. Above the bunk beds, in between the picture of Captain Rhodes (who seemed a lot better than the last four Group Commanding Officers they'd sent us) and a shot of Bub the Zombie was a small 11x16 picture of a rose garden torn from a magazine. That lonely garden was Nancy's contribution to the decorations. We'd jokingly mocked her about it when she first pinned it up, but now it felt soothing. It made our pretty stark room feel warmer somehow.

It wasn't Atlas, but it was the almost home. More of a home than where we had been, and as far as we knew the last home we'd know. Any time we wanted to doubt it, all we had to do is look at Nancy's face, Bomber's stomach and thigh, my shoulder and thigh, and the dogtags from my dead troops that I kept in the top right drawer of my desk.

None of us were getting off this mountain alive. If the Russians didn't kill us, if our own leaders didn't kill us...

The mountain would.

I paused at the entry of the main room, wet and dripping from a 10-minute hot shower, my new glasses feeling weird on my nose, wrapped in a towel and steaming despite the warmth of the room. I looked at my two best friends and smiled.

Bomber leaned back in the chair, tilting just to the point where gravity would snatch his ass and drop him flat on the tile, his right hand lifting the bottle and drinking deeply from it. In his other hand, dropped down beside the chair with a lit cigarette in it. He'd moved out of his old room, choosing to move in with us rather than stay by himself.

Nancy was laying on the bed, her feet up on the headboard, dressed in PT shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that showed her breasts when she moved wrong, the reason one breast had sagged to the side far enough we could see her hardened nipple. She kept a room down in Titty Territory, but stayed up here with us. Nobody had made an issue of it since I'd knocked out Corporal Dawson. I stood over her and smiled down at her. She was reading a hard core German porn mag, holding it up with one hand with the other hand tucked into the waistband of her pants, her wrist twisting now and then.

It was a slice of normality in our fucked up lives.

"Christ, Ant, I can't believe we're stuck in here again," Nancy bitched, tilting her head back to look at me and letting the magazine fall on her chest to cover what had held my interest. "Less than two weeks of convalescent leave and they drag us back to this shit-hole."

"The Army pays us to be here, not to hang out on Bomber's farm," I said, moving into the room, leaving wet footprints behind. Both of my friends snorted.

"Amen, brother," Bomber said, holding up the bottle and then taking another long swig out of it.

"Whatever," Nancy grumbled, returning her attention to the magazine. She turned the page, and then licked her lips, her eyes bright, as the magazine showed her a plump redhead catching semen with her tongue. "This place sucks."

I shrugged and moved over to the dresser. Bomber looked at the plywood-covered window as I grabbed a pair of shorts out of the dresser and a T-shirt and started to dress. It was too hot in the room for a full uniform, so I just pulled on my blue with gold trim PT shorts and a Ratt T-shirt.

I could feel Nancy's eyes on me as I changed. It made me feel warm.

Outside the door came the tapping of shoes on tile, followed by a little girl's giggle. The plywood shuddered and groaned as the wind pushed against it, but it held well enough that not even a trace of wind leaked through.

We'd put insulation where the windows had been, layered plastic on both sides of the window, then put plywood on each side of the window, creating a nice little sandwich that kept out the worst of the cold. Most of the first floor windows had been replaced, as had the far side of the second floor, but we were still a day or three away from replacing my window. Twenty people sounded like a lot until you realized the full scope of the repairs we had to do. The window replacements were taking the longest, each room needing the windows fixed and the doors rehung. The windows kept out the weather, so they were first.

I liked the plywood better.

I pulled on the shorts and T-shirt, then tapped Bomber's shoulder. I motioned at the bottle when he looked up and he handed it to me. I took a long pull off the Asbach, feeling the warmth in my stomach, then handed it back.

"The rest of the unit is pissed about all their shit getting destroyed," Bomber said when I leaned against the desk and lit a cigarette. He'd been back to the main body of the unit, where they were camped out at Grafenwöhr, and apparently had found out everyone's opinions.

"Fuck 'em, they weren't here," I said, dropping the match in the empty beer can we were using for ashes and butts.

"Still, good thing we blamed it on Lewis, Hewitt and Jacobs," Nancy said, then gave a long sigh. "Oh, that's sooo good."

Bomber laughed and shook his head, and we grinned at each other.

Nancy had pretty much lost her inhibitions around us. She refused to sleep in her own room, preferring to bunk with us most of the time. It caused rumors, but the only time someone had made a snide remark in front of her about it she'd knocked out three of the dude's teeth.

Throw in what happened to Dawson, and nobody had said shit else about it in front of us.

"Hear the news?" Bomber asked me.

"The CO's going to have us sodomized in public?" I asked, hopping up on the top of the dresser and reaching for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide and my notebook.

"No. They're sending up Lieutenant James to supervise us."

My hand froze less than an inch from the books.

"Yeah," Bomber said, noting my reaction. "He's promised to have the barracks livable in less than a week so the unit can move back in as soon as the snow clears enough."

Even though I'd never personally met the man, his reputation preceded him. He'd only been in the unit since it had moved to Graf in September, but supposedly he was a total hardass who couldn't give a shit less about his men. He had a nasty reputation as a cruel and cold son of a bitch who put the mission first above everything.

"Oh, shit," I said, turning away from the books. "Why?"

Bomber shrugged and took another drink off his bottle. "The CO's getting tired of the delays. He's worried that it'll look bad if we haven't gotten the barracks back up to speed by spring and Lieutenant James volunteered."

"Which CO is that?" I asked.

We'd gone through three of them since an axe-wielding maniac had attacked us. We hadn't had one during those cold dark days; the new one had committed suicide; the one who replaced him had stumbled into the concertina wire surrounding the field site our unit called home, severed his femoral artery struggling, and bled out before anyone found him; the third one had wrecked his car trying to come up to the barracks at night, in the snow. While his car had been found, he hadn't.

I figured Tandy had eaten him. Or maybe some dead Nazi SS. Or maybe just wolves.

"Some Colonel by the name of Reed," Bomber said, shrugging.

It was an oddity about our unit. Despite being thought of as a company, apparently a 'Group' was led by a Colonel. Weirdly enough the office of 'First Sergeant' was filled by a Sergeant Major. Platoon Sergeants were either Master Sergeants or Sergeant First Class Promotable.

It could have had something to do with the fact that 2/19th had over 200 people in it.

Or it could have just been more Cold War Bullshit.

"What's he like?" I asked. Bomber had been to the field site where the unit was wintering twice, I'd stayed in the barracks working.

"He's a dick who talks about making Brigadier and how we're going to do things like the Big Red One," Bomber said, handing me the bottle so I could take another slug.

Gunfire sounded in the distance, but I ignored it. Sometimes we could hear the units on the main post using the training areas. It sounded like gunfire right outside the barracks but in reality it was miles away on the other side of the mountain.

"He makes it here, and gets his star. Great." I handed the bottle back. Bomber nodded sagely and took another drink as I continued. "He'll probably get us all killed."

Outside the door, tap shoes ran by, and we heard the little girl giggle.

She was probably dancing out in the hallway. She'd been doing that more and more frequently, although she was still keeping out of sight. Two days ago Corporal Shieldings had found blood smears frozen on the walls, but by the time we'd gotten to where he'd sworn he'd seen it there had been nothing but ice on the wall.

Yesterday Specialist Lanks had sworn up and down she'd seen a puddle of frozen blood at the bottom of the middle stairwell. She'd described how it looked like not only had someone been laying in the puddle, but there were boot heel marks where someone had been dragged away, up the stairs, and a steady pattern of blood drops up the stairs.

I'd gone up to my room at her description of the bloodstain, the way the back door was open to the outside, and the frozen muddy bootsteps leading into the hallway and to the frozen puddle.

I'd locked the door, grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey out of the dresser, and curled up on the bed, pressed hard against the corner of the room. Scattered images of the desperate fight in the stairwell kept flashing in front of my eyes, and I'd opened the bottle of alcohol in the darkness of my room.

And promptly drank myself into obliteration.

I'd woken up to Nancy cuddled up next to me, gloriously naked beneath the blankets, her arms around me and facing me. I'd lain there for a long time, staring at her sleeping face, memorizing every little part of it. From her long lashes, to the scar down the side of her face, to the tiny little scar on the angle of her jaw, I knew all of those scars.

I loved her.

...my Nancy...

We left at least one light on during the night, Bomber and I. We didn't like the room being completely dark, and it wasn't uncommon for one of us to wake the others up screaming during the night.

We refused to see Mental Health about it. Because fuck those guys.

"When's he supposed to get here?" I asked. I glanced up at the sound of grinding teeth, and saw Nancy's face, her eyes squeezed shut, the muscles of her jaw knotted, her back arched slightly, and her hand busy underneath her shorts. As I watched she dropped the magazine on her chest and brought her fist up to punch herself hard at the point of her jaw.

I turned away.

"Today," Bomber told me, holding out the booze. I took it as Nancy let out a series of sharp gasps and collapsed, writhing slowly on the bed. I took a long drink, then handed the bottle back.

"It's supposed to start snowing hard tonight," I told him. He shook his head as I continued. "Yeah, we're going to be trapped up here for God knows how long with that asshole."

"Let's just hope it doesn't start happening again," Bomber said. "Speaking of fucked up shit, how's your head?"

I grinned at him, pulling my attention away from where Nancy had gone still on the bed, smiling that slight smile she got when she was enjoying the afterglow. "Not too bad. The headaches aren't too bad anymore."

"How's the eyes?" he asked, grinning at what he knew had gone on behind him.

"Still pretty bad. The doctors said it's probably permanent," I told him.

"Could be worse, from what Nancy said you're lucky you aren't blind." He smiled. I reached forward and punched him lightly in the shoulder.

"You're lucky you aren't dead," I told him. His smile got wider.

"Our girl saved us both," he said.

"I'm right fucking here, you inbred morons," Nancy said, her soft voice and the warmth in her tone robbing the words of their sting.

"Oh, are you with us again?" Bomber said, turning around.

"Maybe," Nancy answered, lifting up two fingers shining wetly in the light. She put them in her mouth, sucking on them, and staring at us challengingly.

I opened my mouth to answer her, the lizard in the back of my head tossing up the image of her with her ass raised up in the air \in my mind, my crotch reacting to the image and her stare when there was a sudden banging on my door. We all turned to look at it, waiting.

The banging came again, this time finishing up with a voice. "Bomber, Stillwater, Nagle, LT James wants everyone to form up in the CQ Area." It was Lanks, who was on CQ.

A glance at the clock showed me it was 1900 hours, which meant that either he'd just gotten there and he wanted a headcount to make sure we were all still alive, to change the schedule we'd come up with and hand out shit for us to do, or to prove his authority over us.

I was betting on the latter.

"Full uniforms?" I shouted, motioning at Bomber to hand me the bottle. Nancy was getting up with a disgusted look on her face, moving to the bathroom so she could rinse off real quick.

"Yeah. He says for everyone to hurry up and not mess around," Lanks yelled back. Fucking figured. Come up two hours after official close of business, then bitch about people 'messing around' and being slow to a formation that nobody had expected.

"We'll be there ASAP," I told her, then took a long pull off the bottle before handing it back to Bomber. I didn't care if he smelled the alcohol, I'd been off for two hours. Plus, the alcohol might help keep me from getting assigned to some asinine make-work that suddenly popped into his officer training addled brain.

Bomber and I got dressed quickly, almost finished by the time Nancy got out of the shower, walking through the room naked and beautiful. The scar on her breast where the psycho in the mask had stabbed her was an angry red welt as big as the last joint of my thumb. While she was dressing I grabbed my boot knife off the shelf, putting the retaining loop around the heel and starting to buckle it down.

"Ant, wait," she said, pausing in the middle of buttoning up her BDU pants.

"What?" I asked, looking up from where I was still bent over.

"Hide that," she said. She shivered and looked around. "Bomber, hide the knives, all but the cheap shit."

"Why?" Bomber asked, clipping his mask on.

Standard uniform. BDU's, boots bloused (never tucked in AKA stovepiped), belt, earplugs in case on first right hand loop from buckle, green notebook and pen in left hand breast pocket, chemical weapon test strips on right side belt loop, radiation badge inside right hand breast pocket, cap folded and in back right pocket, gas mask carrier hanging off the left hip with the waist strap under the BDU top and the leg strap loose, and the ever present dogtags. I slid the radiation measuring pen in my pocket next to my little black Skillcraft pen.

"Just... please, humor me," she said and shivered, glancing at the plywood.

"All right," Bomber said. I handed him my knife, boot sheath and all, and we got to hiding the knives where we could. Some of the cheap-ass ones we hid in the usual places, knowing they'd be easily found, some we left in plain sight, usually the useless decorative ones, and others went into the hiding spots that had never been found even when CID tossed our rooms on their quarterly inspections of the barracks. I put a cheap ass knife that was more for show than anything else into my boot, and together we tromped out, leaving the lights on in the room.

The hallway was ice cold, ice glimmering on the walls and ceiling. Our breath plumed out in front of us, and our boots squeaked as the frost on the tile compressed under the tread.

"WELCOME TO HELL" was still scratched into the paint above the tiled section of the wall, underneath the emergency light that was torn open. The team replacing all the batteries on the emergency lights had run into trouble when over half of the lights turned out to have battery packs that weren't compatible with the new replacements.

Some shit called lithium. It was supposed to last like five times longer and provide more wattage for the lights. It was also supposed to function better in the extreme cold we lived in. Rumor Control said that it was brand new shit, just out of DARPA, designed for extreme cold weather conditions and high amperage electronics like our POS NVG-7's or the new radio that was rumored to be replacing the Prick-77 early Vietnam War era POS.

Nancy figured it was probably designed for vibrators.

Not that it mattered, we ignored anything that didn't directly rate to increasing our survivability, either for the winter or in combat. The battery packs weren't compatible with the shit that it was supposed to go, the hot-shit new radios had been intercepted by another unit instead of coming to us, and nobody had seen hide nor hair of the "lithium" batteries for our NVG's.

The light was blameless, just a victim of the Army's wonderful supply system. I didn't hold a grudge against it. Bomber thrust a middle finger out at the disemboweled emergency light as we passed and headed down to the frost-covered stairwell door that would let us into the middle stairwell.

Together, drawn up into a little group, we trudged down to the middle stairwell and headed down a floor. I paused for a moment at the middle landing, staring down below us at the darkness where the stairwell ended for the bottom floor.

Where I'd been stabbed through the right shoulder and left for dead by a maniac. Where Tandy had pushed his finger inside the wound in my shoulder and then pulled it free so he could suck the blood from his finger. Where I'd done a good goddamn job of trying to die.

My shoulder throbbed and I ignored it.

They'd taken out the staples that the surgeons had closed the wound with originally about roughly three weeks ago at Darnell Army Medical Center on Fort Hood. Bomber's dad had driven us there, then driven us back. He'd been a friendly guy, tall, lanky, and balding. He'd liked Nancy and me, and when Bomber had told him about how he'd been dying on the table but Nancy saved him, he'd unashamedly wept and embraced Nancy, thanking her for saving his son.

Nancy had looked like she wanted to cry.

A week ago, trying to muscle a windowframe into the Third Magazine Office, my shoulder had been dislocated and the scar had split open. I'd lost two pints of blood and had to be stapled back up. Instead of keeping me in the hospital, I'd been sent back to the unit as soon as I cleared recovery.

And those assholes had sent me right back to the barracks with 32 staples in my shoulder.

"Ant, come on, honey," Nancy said, pulling me into the downstairs hallway of Queer Country. "Don't look, just come away."

I shook off the dark thoughts and followed them as we went through the doorway and tromped down the hallway of Titty Territory after calling out "MALES COMING THROUGH!" in a loud voice. It was just common courtesy, even though they didn't have to call that out coming through our section of the barracks.

It had been explained to us, and despite a lot of other guys grumbling about "special treatment" and "EO bullshit", I understood why. Seeing some dude in his boxers walking to the laundry room wasn't usually something enticing and sexually titillating to a female soldier. It wasn't much different than seeing us just wearing cutoffs or workout shorts to them. But for us to see them in bra and panties automatically put them on the defensive, was sexual to most men, and gave them a vulnerability, real or not, that they didn't deserve to have put on them just because we were walking through their hallway instead of Hammerhead Hall up on the second floor.

It was the same reason the wire-reinforced glass on the doors leading to Titty Territory was painted black and ours wasn't.

Stokes was coming out of her room. She was wearing her BDUs, her mask carrier clearing the doorway with an unconscious hip-swivel. She smiled at us and fell into step with us, and we smiled back.

The woman was an Amazon, standing at a massive six foot four inches and over two hundred and twenty pounds. She had broad shoulders, thick waist, and arms and leg like tree trunks. I'd seen her bench press more than most guys I knew, and she often joked about being a power lifter someday when she got out of the Army. Her brown hair was pulled back into a pony tail and she'd taken the time to put on muted red lipstick. She liked to look nice, and she'd mentioned more than once that the makeup was for her and not for other people. She smiled at me with sparkling blue eyes, a chubby face and a fading hickey on her neck.

Probably my brother's work. He'd gotten divorced while I was on convalescent leave. His wife, a miserable bitch I'd always hated, divorcing him after draining the bank accounts and getting a restraining order against him, citing "I'm afraid of him" to the judge. He couldn't see his kid, she'd taken his house and car and all of his shit that he'd "abandoned" Stateside, and got half of his military pay.

It was a typical story. Nothing surprising in it to anyone who'd ever been overseas.

"How's the head, Stillwater?" Stokes asked, leaning toward me to bump me with her shoulder as she seamlessly merged with our little group, bringing our trio to a quartet. Her sheer mass knocked me slightly off balance, but I'd been ready for it and recovered pretty easily.

"All right today," I told her truthfully. Two days ago I'd had a migraine so bad her and Bomber had had to drag me to my room and put me in bed. I'd been blind and unable to function, the toes of my boots dragging along the floor and my feet kicking spasmodically. After Bomber had left she'd sat with me, silent in the dark room, and replaced the cool cloths without saying a word. I'd woken up from nightmare filled sleep to find her holding my hand. I'd cried out in pain, laying in the darkness, holding her hand. When I asked her for some water, she'd made a pleased sound before reaching out and squeezing my hand. It was a touch of affection I was unused to, and it almost made me cry.

"Glad to hear it," she said, patting my shoulder. She smiled, brightening the hallway. "How are the two of you?"

"Fine," Bomber said. Stokes made him nervous. He'd walked in on her and my brother when my brother had been in the barracks a few days back, dropping off glass, doors, and furniture. My brother scared the shit out of him for some reason, and he was worried that at any seconds Stokes or William were going to call him out for walking in on them.

Stokes chuckled, almost as if she knew what made him so nervous, and Nancy answered.

"Wondering what the hell is going to happen next," she said, the anger in her voice evident. "I'd just finished rubbing one out and was trying to decide which one of these two morons I was going to take a ride on when this shit happened."

Stokes laughed. "Oh man, I hate that shit."

"How's Cobb doing?" Nancy finished.

"He's... doing OK." Stokes' good humor vanished.

Cobb had been sent to Track-Three to dry out. After last winter he'd seemed to be getting better, but in October the CUC-V he'd been driving had been slammed into by a 5-ton, shattered, and thrown in a ditch. The dashboard had pinned him inside the wreckage, the LT he was driving for had taken three hours to die, the young female private in the back seat had died just before dawn, and Cobb had been trapped in the wreckage till late the next morning when some tankers heading out to the range had seen the wreck.

He'd dove into the bottle hard when he was released from the hospital, worse than after the barracks fire. If he wasn't drunk, he was trying to get drunk, and Stokes had turned him in. My brother William had requested Track-Three for him, pleading with the then-CO to put Cobb in alcohol rehab instead of chaptering him out. So Cobb had been sent to Track-Three.

"You visit him?" Bomber asked.

"Every weekend," Stokes said. "He told me last time he doesn't want me to come and see him because he feels like I dimed him out."

"You did the right thing, Stokes," I reassured her. Two weeks ago, Cobb had said some things that had scared Stokes, and she'd told the people running the rehab, and Cobb had been put on suicide watch.

They caught him making a noose out of his sheets. After that, he'd broken his window and cut his wrists bad enough he needed thirty-eight stitches.

"He'll come around, just give him time," Bomber said. "He upset about you and William?"

"No." Her tone changed to defiant. "We were over last summer. It's just that... well... I wish he wasn't mad at me."

"You did the right thing," Nancy told her.

"Doesn't feel that way," she said as we pushed open the door to the CQ area. "To top it off," she sighed, "William and I broke up last night."

I didn't get a chance to ask why.

LT James was standing there in front of four ragged lines of troops in a uniform that looked like he'd just pulled it out of the drier. He was one of the few officers who refused to follow the tradition of starching and ironing his uniform, citing the regulations that expressly warned the starch compromised the infra-red protection and that ironing creases into the uniform defeated the shapeless look that was an additional layer of camouflage.

His uniform was baggy, his black hair cut severely short on top of his head. His face was angular, severe, with his cheekbones and nose like an ax-blade. His blue eyes were cold, emotionless, and appeared empty. He gave off a feeling like he was a machine, some sort of infiltration robot that did a really shitty job of emulating a person.

There were thirty of us on the rebuilding team, but it looked like we weren't the last ones to arrive. About twenty people were all that were here, and like our little quartet, all the uniforms were starched, creased, and the boots spitshined.

I took my place at the back, at the far right of the fourth squad, Bomber shouldered in next to me, with Nancy beside him. Stokes moved up the second place in second squad, her Corporal rank putting her as assistant squad leader. Her team was in charge of taking inventories, replacing the war stocks we'd used, and replacing the bloodstained tile. My team was in charge of replacing all the damaged doors and door frames.

We'd kicked them all of out of the frames, sometimes breaking the frame itself, to deny whoever it had been with the axe any safe haven. That made us real popular with the rest of the work crew who were trying to repair the damage our desperate rampage had done to the barracks.

As everyone formed up, LT James stood there, dressed in his winter BDU's, with a field jacket on, silently watching us stand at parade rest in front of him. He oozed smug satisfaction as we all waited on him to give the order to come to attention.

There was also the faint feeling of malevolence from him that I could sense.

"Corporal Stillwater, come here please," he said. His voice was a pleasant tenor, smooth and rolling. Rumor control had it that he had been a choir singer in high school or maybe in church. The voice surprised me with its lack of malevolence.

"Yes, sir," I said, coming to attention. I took a single step backwards, then looped around the right side of the formation and stopped in front of him, coming to attention.

"Your boot knife, Corporal," he stated. I waited silently, a small power game, and he knew it. The corner of his mouth twitched and I could feel his amusement as he waited a moment, savoring our silent exchange. "Give it to me, Corporal." He had given ground in our little game, and the expected flash of anger in his eyes was instead a mixture of approval and amusement, which left me off balance.

"Yes, sir," I said, bending down and pulling it out of my boot. It was a clip-on knife, not the full blown sheathe like my Gerber had. I straightened up, coming to attention, and held out the knife by the sheathe toward him.

"Very good, Corporal." He took the blade from me. "Return to your post."

"Yes, sir," I said, moving quickly back. The squad hadn't moved over, they would have if I'd been sent on an errand. When I got back and entered formation properly, I could see he had set my knife on the CQ counter.

We waited silently as the last of the work crew got there, all of them getting into formation. The whole time I watched LT James, taking into account his body language, who his eyes lingered on, and the slight smile on his face as if he had a secret.

Above us boots crashed and voices shouted in German, or at least it sounded vaguely like German. When Sergeant Butcher came down the stairwell and opened the door, the wind screamed like the damned and he was forced to push the stairwell door shut.

Something flickered through the LT's eyes and I wondered what it was.

"Group, attention," the LT finally said. We silently went 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," the LT said, and we all slid our feet shoulder length apart, putting our hands behind our backs, our palms crossing at the middle of our back with our knuckles against our belts. I left my right arm at my side like I had when we were standing at parade rest, putting my left hand behind my back.

"Corporal Stillwater, is there a reason your right hand is not in the correct position?" the LT asked gently.

...Asshole. You know good and damn well why...

"Injury to my right shoulder joint, sir," I told him. "I have a profile that puts me on limited duty."

He smiled, a small thing, that did nothing to reassure me as if felt almost fabricated. "Very well, I shall examine your profile after this formation."

"Yes, sir," I said. He turned his attention to the rest of the group.

"Colonel Reed, before his resignation as Group Commander, put me in charge of this repair platoon," the LT started.

The Colonel had resigned? That wasn't right. If he was that worried about getting his star, resigning his post would damage his chances of being chosen for promotion.

"As we are currently without a Group Commander, I saw no reason to shirk performance of my duty and traveled up here after informing the Executive Officer that I had been assigned up here," he continued, not bothering to explain the news that Colonel Reed had quit. "Having reviewed the documentation, I have come to a decision about the performance of this work group."

...here it comes, the Big Green Army Dick, aimed right at our faces...

"I am more than satisfied of the progress so far," he said.

...fucking fig... wait, what?...

"You have been working in an extreme environment, working quickly with the tools and manpower available to you, and those of you acting as squad leaders have been more than adequate at preventing cold weather or work injuries, have managed to keep your squads together and prevent any serious failings," he continued. "Having compared my briefing to the actual conditions of the barracks, the weather, and the supplies, I have come to the conclusion that Colonel Reed was suffering an intelligence failure based on the fact he had never personally viewed these barracks."

I did my best to keep my face blank.

"I believe you should all be commended for your hard work in a difficult situation," he said, smiling. Although it was supposed to put us all at ease, something about it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "I have revised everything from caloric intake to authorized rest periods, to estimated time of completion on the project."

...now here it comes, the ass fucking. Get ready to be worked like slaves and fed cat-food or dirt...

"I am hereby authorizing the use of A-Rats instead of MREs, you will all work 10 hours on fourteen off, with a 24 hour rest period after every forty-eight hour work period." He paused, his smile growing broader. "That is correct, we shall be doing this two days on, one day off."

...something isn't right...

"Additionally, I do not want any of you working for too long each day, so I have informed our acting commander, the XO, that the time estimates for the work projects were unreasonable and ordered them revised." He looked at everyone, smiling, but to me it looked like he was smiling about a joke that only he knew about; it looked like a mocking smile. "With that in mind, I warned the acting commander that things might not be done until the end of March or the beginning of April."

"Those of you on profile, please see me after formation so that we can discuss whether or not you are fit to work up here. I understand that some of you were pulled from medical leave," he said, then came to attention.

"Group, attention." We all snapped into attention. "Next formation is at zero nine-hundred. Fall out."

Everyone broke up, but about eight of us waited, moving over to the LT and forming a semi-circle around him.

"Profiles, please." He smiled. I handed him the folded over profile sheet I carried in my pocket.

He took them, moving around the CQ desk and standing behind him. He removed his green notebook and a pen, and reviewed the profiles, jotting down notes about each of them.

"Corporal Stillwater, why are you not in Wurzburg or somewhere that your injuries can be properly treated?" he asked me. "This is a serious headwound and not something that even the slightest chance should be taken with. It could permanently affect your intellect, your speech, your memory, and many other cerebral functions. This puts your health, life, and career in danger. What reason did the Chain of Command give for refusing you proper followup treatment?

"Mission essential," I quoted, barely managing to keep the sarcastic bitterness out of my tone. "I'm the only one here with QASI authorization and access in case someone needs records pulled. I'm also the only one who knows how to run the computers, bring the War Fighter Tunnels up to full operation, and am rated as an armorer as well as being the secondary NBC NCO."

He nodded and gave me a sympathetic glance.

Alarm bells started ringing in the back of my head.

"Understandable then," he said. "The Army doesn't care, a sad but true fact, but I do. I hereby place you on light duty. No more construction, I want you to heal up and not risk your career or your health. From here on out your place of duty is your office. Go over the paperwork for your site, and any paperwork I send you, answer the phones, but other than that, I don't want you lifting anything heavy. You are to take frequent breaks to rest your eyes, and should you being feeling pain or suffering from blurred vision, any ringing in your ears, loss of balance, or nausea you are to immediately go and lie down. Do not attempt to finish whatever task you have been assigned, and only seek someone out to report your being taken out of action if you encounter someone on the way to your room or were working with other people."

I opened my mouth to protest and he stopped me with a wave. "Do not attempt to claim that you are not above breaking your profile or that the head injury is not that severe, Corporal. I reviewed your Smith File, you refuse to ride a profile and aren't above breaking it if it helps accomplish a mission. That is an admirable trait, soldier." I flushed with the unexpected praise. "But I shall not lose the Army a valuable asset, a man with millions of dollars and over a year of training under his belt, and something the taxpayers of the United States have invested a significant amount in, just to accomplish a mission that is not that time critical."

"Specialist Nagle," he said, moving his attention to Nancy. The way he just dropped me startled me and threw me off balance. The lizard hissed at the sudden change of focus.

"Yes, sir?" she asked.

"While your injuries were largely cosmetic and without complications, and command feels that they may not place you at risk for further damage, I cannot help but notice that if it was not for your actions both Corporal Stillwater and Specialist Bomber would be dead. Actions, may I note, that were performed without adequate training or supplies, that saved the lives of both of those soldiers."

"Yes, sir." Nancy looked thrown off by LT James' stilted and formal mode of speech, the same as I felt inside but refused to show.

"With that in mind, your new duty is to make sure people with profiles are healing properly, abiding by their profiles, and one additional duty I have for you if you have a high confidence in your ability to carry out the mission." He smiled again, and I noticed that his smile didn't touch his eyes. It was strange to see, but it was like only the muscles of his mouth made the slight smile. There was no crinkling at the edge of the eyes.

"Sir?" Nancy was obviously thrown off.

"I will be drawing FM's for you to read. I took the liberty of drawing medical correspondence courses from the post library on the way up here, ones that are more advanced than the correspondence courses you previously supplemented your education with, and I noted your exceptionally high scores." The smile was gentle, fatherly, but made my balls try to crawl up into my stomach as it still didn't touch his eyes or any other part of his face. "Your place of duty shall be in the office with Corporal Stillwater, studying when you are not doing medical examinations. Additionally, at the beginning of every 24 hour rest period, I want you to examine everyone for cold related injuries, stress injuries, or anything else you feel might endanger a member of this work crew."

"Yes, sir." Nancy was obviously confused. Nobody had ever taken her medical interests seriously.

"You may be interested to know that I was able to draw Special Forces medical training manuals for your use on my authority as well as a training dummy normally used by doctors, thanks to a close acquaintance I have at Darmstatd Army Medical Center." How the Nine Hells he'd managed to do that escaped me. Hell, the idea of LT James having a 'close aquaintance' was about as foreign as a KKK member having a black 'friend'.

"Umm, thank you, sir," Nancy blushed.

"Finally, I want you to supervise, in the evenings, proper physical rehabilitation for all of these soldiers on profile, if physical therapy is called for. After we are done here, I will give you the keys to the gym areas of the barracks in the Two North section and the fourth floor."

"Thank you, sir." Nancy sounded as confused as I felt.

"Specialist Bomber?" The LT looked at him.

"Sir?" Bomber looked as if he expected the other shoe to drop and crush us all.

"You suffered an extremely dangerous abdominal injury that almost proved fatal, Specialist," LT James said. "You had to have a bowel resection as well as were suffering from peritonitis, correct?

"Yes, sir."

"I will not risk you aggravating your extensive internal injuries or put you at risk for reinfection. You will assist Corporal Stillwater, who will train you in his job. Additionally you will begin studying for the E-5 board. I intend on putting you in for the E-5 board as soon as this mission is complete," the LT told him. "I want you to stick to your profile."

"Yes, sir," Bomber said.

"Very good. The three of you are dismissed. Private First Class Johnson?" He turned to Johnson, one of the guys who had a profile from a dislocated elbow the month before.

We started walking back to the room, and it wasn't till we were in the stairwell that I stopped. The lizard had just reminded me of a very crucial point.

"Ant, what?" Nancy asked, turning to look at me. She had one hand on the bannister and was in the middle of taking the steps two at a time.

"I just realized something," I told them.

"What?" Bomber asked. "That the whole fucking thing was surreal?"

"No," I told them. I grimaced. "I didn't even remember to ask him why he took my knife."

"Shit, you're right," Bomber said, continuing up the stairs. I followed. We exited the stairwell into Hammerhead Hall and trudged down to the door of the room. A low breeze moaned through the hallway, cold around our ankles but unfelt above the knees. Bomber jammed his key into the door and unlocked it, putting the key back into his pocket as the door swung open.

The room was dark, which made the lizard hiss. He didn't like dark places.

"Hold up," Bomber said, putting his arm out and stopping Nancy from going in.

"What?" she snapped.

"We left the lights on," I said, lifting up on my tiptoes to look over Bomber's shoulder.

"So? The lights in this place are fucked," she said, but Bomber kept his arm in front of her, reaching inside with his other hand to flip on the light switch.

The light in the main room and the other one in the small hallway came on. The polished tile gleamed, not many scuff marks on the floor, but no hint as to whether or not anyone had stepped on the floor aside from us.

"Check the stuff," I said, pushing by them and walking carefully, looking for trip-wires or anything else. The lizard was grumbling to itself.

Call it paranoid, but I'd learned my lesson.

We tossed the room quickly, knowing what we were looking for.

All of the knives in the easy to find places, and two of the carefully hidden spots, were gone. So was the pistol I kept taped to the bottom of the top drawer of the dresser, and the pistol John kept hidden in the desk. My boot knife was where it belonged, as was my trusty Gerber and John's K-Bar he'd won in a poker match. Nancy's Soviet fighting knife was missing, a fact that made her kick the chair across the room.

"Someone tossed our fucking room," Nancy snarled. I glanced at Bomber and he grinned.

Our room? he mouthed. I just shrugged.

"It's starting again," Nancy said, sitting down on John's bed. She put her face in her hands. "God help us, it's all starting again."

"God, I hope not," I said, hopping up and sitting on the dresser. Bomber sat down on the chair and grabbed the bottle while I grabbed the pack of smokes we'd left on the dresser. I lit one and handed it to him, taking the bottle and taking a long pull off of it before handing it to Nagle, who'd grabbed the only other chair and dragged it over next to Bomber. I lit a smoke, handed it to her, then lit myself one before setting the mostly empty pack and the lighter back on the dresser.

"You're forgetting something," she said softly, uncovering her face and leaning forward.

"What are we forgetting?" Bomber asked, blowing a smoke ring.

It clicked right before she said it and I felt a chill crawl up my spine.

"Everyone was accounted for at the formation, right?" she said.

"Then who went through our room?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Oh, shit," Bomber said.