Grafenwöhr
US Army Training Area
Training Site 22
2/19th Company Area
West Germany
11 November, 1987
1300 Hours

LTC Harmon stared at the creepy uncle looking Timmons, his weak chin trembling slightly as the Senior Agent slowly turned to face him, his hands balling up into fists.

"You did what?" Timmons asked slowly, drawing out each word slightly and biting the ends off of them. I could see the tenseness in his back and the back of his neck by the way he stood. He was wearing a down jacket, a Dallas Cowboy's jersey, ugly insulated "moon boots", and parachute pants. He'd topped it off with an "I <3 GERMANY!" baseball hat.

He looked like a complete fool.

"I ordered Lieutenant Christensen out to FSTS-317 along with Staff Sergeant Quinten to take over operations for the site," He said. He was obviously confused as to the reason for the rage I could feel pouring off of the CIA Agent.

"And you cleared this with Chief Warrant Officer Three Henley?" He asked mildly.

"I'm not in the habit of clearing my orders with my subordinates," Harmon scoffed.

"Did I, or did I not, give specific instructions not to reassign any leader to any of the sites without clearing it with Chief Warrant Officer Three Henley and myself?" He asked slowly.

CSM Halloway looked outraged that Timmons would dare remind them of the fact that in all reality, he was running 2/19th, not the Rat Fuck Trio.

"Now see here, Timmons," Halloway shouted.

Timmons spun on Halloway, stepping forward into the larger and beefier man's face. "Don't you raise your voice at me. Not now, not ever," his voice was low, soft, and as deadly as a razor wrapped in silk. "Don't you think for a moment I won't personally leave you on your back with rain bouncing on your open eyes if you for one second endanger my operation."

The Command Sergeant Major stepped back, his face paling, and Timmons stepped with him.

"Every. Single. Thing. I do," he hissed. The creepy uncle act was gone now and I watched with interest as the Senior Special Agent slipped out from under the mask, "Is carefully calculated. I will not have you meddling about in plans that reach further than you can possibly comprehend. I will not have you expend lives needlessly in order to bolster your pathetic and childish desire to be in charge of something you are not intellectually capable of comprehending, nor will I allow you to cause any delay or disruption to my operation," The light glittered on the straight razor that had appeared in his fingers, unfolded, and Halloway gulped loudly. "I will erase you. from. fucking. existence. Do you understand?"

Halloway nodded and Timmons took two steps back, the straight razor vanishing as the tent flaps opened and Sergeant First Class Oddermeyer pushed his way in. He stopped, looking at everyone in the tent with curiosity, and I noticed his grip tightening on his M16 as his body subconsciously reacted to the tension that made the air shimmer.

"What?" Harmon snapped at the other man, and the only thing that prevented Oddermeyer's flush of anger from easily being seen was the darkness of his skin.

"We've got casualties," SFC Oddermeyer said, his voice bleak.

"Where?" Harmon asked.

"Atlas," Oddermeyer, Timmons, and I said all at the same time.

Oddermeyer just nodded. Harmon frowned at me like I had somehow done it myself.

"Who's dead?" Timmons asked.

"Who the fuck is this guy?" Oddermeyer asked.

"Senior Analyst Timmons, CIA," Timmons snapped. Oddermeyer nodded.

"Christensen and Quinten are dead," He said.

"What? How?" Harmon asked, Major Dryer repeating him.

"Some kind of ammunition explosion, we're still trying to get details," He said.

Timmons looked at one of the agents with him, who just nodded very slightly.

I knew right there that Halloway was about to vanish as if he had never existed. While personally I was glad that he'd never pollute another child with his presence, the idea that with a simple glance Timmons could eliminate a Command Sergeant Major chilled me to the bone.

It was one of the reasons I hated the CIA.

The agent who had nodded excused himself from the tent and I briefly wondered if he was going to dig a hole to dump the CSM's body into it.

Still the rest of my brain was carrying on the conversation.

"Do we know the exact details, Sergeant?" I asked.

He nodded. "Specialist Stokes called it in. Said they were moving that old dynamite from the Korean War to the blast pit," he started.

Old Korean War era dynamite, sweating bad enough that the wooden boxes had crystallized nitroglycerine on them. Stillwater had been trying to get the time to move them for almost three years, but felt it was just safer to empty the bunker then to shut down all operations and risk everyone's lives moving those thirty boxes.

"Apparently Sergeant Quinten told them to stop being such chickenshits, got in the forklift, and headed off at top speed toward their blast pit," Oddermeyer said, shaking his head. "The forklift hit a bump, the boxes were slammed upwards, and one fell off the pallet."

I resisted an urge to laugh out loud. The fact that idiot Quinten had just killed himself and only blew up a shitty forklift was far far less than I had expected.

"Shrapnel from the blast killed Lieutenant Christensen while he was apparently counseling several of the members of First Squad on their unfeminine appearance," The big Sergeant First Class shook his head, "According to Stokes, it looked like one of the forks hit him broadside."

I had to light a cigarette to stop from laughing at the mental image of that walking talking abortion of an officer lecturing that big man-hands midwestern gorilla on not looking feminine when she by all rights should have been wearing a horned helmet and wading into the Picts and Guals a couple thousand years ago, and then him suddenly vanishing in a welter of blood and gore.

I was willing to bet that the blood probably made that massive chasm of a cunt she had between her thunder thighs slicken right up with the Mid-West gorilla equivalent of motor oil. Someone, somewhere, was going to find themselves tied up on her bed.

They'd be lucky if she didn't eat them.

"No big loss," I said, exhaling the smoke. "Both of them were functionally retarded anyway."

Everyone turned to stare at me and I shrugged. "If you're so goddamn stupid that you think crystallized dynamite won't kill you for looking at it, then you deserve to die. I'm just glad it only killed those two morons and didn't damage the site."

"But Atlas is without leadership again," Harmon tried.

I just snorted. "Stokes is there. That big lumbering ox probably knows more about that site than all of us put together, providing she isn't sitting in Stillwater's office rubbing her clam with those big man hands of hers after seeing an officer cut in half."

"Chief Henley," Harmon started.

"Oh, shut up," I told him, shaking my head. "Stokes has ran that site before while Stillwater and Bomber were on other missions."

The CIA agent came back in the tent, nodding at Timmons, and I felt my stomach clench. A half second later my guts started burning as the stomach acid started eating at my intestines.

"We need to send someone else out there," He tried. "We can't leave Atlas in command of an E-4."

Timmons sat down in a chair, lighting a cigarette of his own. "It was run by Corporal Stillwater for over three years and nobody thought about replacing him before now. Is there something I should know?"

"How my predecessors ran those ammunition sites before I arrived is of no bearing to what kind of leadership I expect to be put in place," Harmon snapped.

"You know what happened to all your predecessors?" Timmons asked.

I grinned.

"Yes, yes, I know," Harmon tried to wave it away.

"You have been in command of this unit less than two months," Timmons said. "I'll bet you can't even recite the numbers and names of the FSTS areas."

Harmon's mouth shut.

Timmons looked up. "I can."

All three of the Rat Fuck Trio colored at that.

"This shit's boring me," I snapped, pushing off the desk I was leaning against, "Whether you like it or not, I've got shit to handle, you morons go back to arguing over who's turn it is to fuck the shaved monkey."

One of them protested, but I didn't care enough to figure out who it was as I pushed my way out of the tent. I deliberately moved into the bullshit cluster-fuck where everyone had stopped their vehicles. The lazy fucks couldn't even be bothered to park them dress right dress and instead had just parked them wherever they damn well pleased like a bunch of goddamn Mexicans all trying to rob the same goddamn store. Hell, none of them had even bothered to put the drip pans under their vehicles, in clear violation of US Army regs.

I stopped and leaned against one of the CUC-V's, resting my forehead against the glass. My guts were on fire, an old pain and one I was used to dealing with. Still, my chest hurt. That little Russian cock sucking chicken shit little bitch had tagged one of my lungs good, even if he'd missed the other one.

I should have pissed in his face when I'd gotten done with him.

The coughing fit took a minute and left me gasping and tasting blood. I covered it by turning around and leaning against the vehicle, lighting a cigarette and staring at the cloudy sky. It was already spitting snow again.

"Chief Henley?" The voice was a woman's and I immediately felt the skin over my spine prickle up.

That Specialist that Stillwater had pawned off on me. Brubaker. She watched me constantly, the light in her eyes supposed to hide the darkness I could see slithering around down there.

"Right here," I snapped. "Done getting your sloppy mayo sandwich of a a gash stuffed with inbred hilly billy cock behind the Conex?" I ran out of breath halfway through and just gave up.

She just shrugged, moving over next to me. She was carrying my LBE and body armor. "You shouldn't be out here without your gear, Chief Henley," she rattled it at me.

"You're not my real mom," I snapped.

She just ignored that comment, holding the gear out to me. I made a face, but I still took it and slowly put it on. Buckling the LBE after velcroing the front shut made my guts hurt, but I was used to that. I plopped my helmet on my head then sighed and rolled my eyes when she handed me my M16.

"You shouldn't smoke with your injuries," She tried as I flicked the cigarette into the snow and lit another.

"You shouldn't try to tell me what to do," I warned her, glaring at her.

My glare shattered on whatever armor she was wearing.

I just sighed. I was starting to hate her more and more. Nothing I said phased her, and she had all the personality of an oil painting. She was the perfect secretary on the surface, but I could tell that something darker lurked underneath that wholesome exterior.

She was one of CSM Stillwater's weapons. I wouldn't forget that.

"Specialist Stokes has called in for further instructions," she said as I began trudging toward my GP small tent.

"Tell her to keep doing whatever stupid shit Stillwater had on the schedule, and try not to get killed," I snapped at  her.

"No further instructions?" She asked.

"Don't jam any of the ammo up her gargantuan ass," I said, breathing hard. Sparkles were appearing before my eyes and the cold seemed to razor into my chest. I put the smoke between my teeth, lowered my head slightly, and kept moving forward.

Part of me reminded myself that the last time I'd walked like this, I bounced off the door of Stillwater's damn truck and landed on my ass in the mud, but I didn't care.

By the time I reached the tent my heart was hammering and I was swallowing blood again, only this time mixed with stomach acid.

It was warm inside when I pushed my way through the flaps. Brubaker followed me, silent, and I kept tabs on her by where my hind-brain "felt" her.

Are you one of CSM Stillwater's 'experiments', little girl? Did he teach you all of this, scoop you out of AIT and remake you in his own dark image?

I sat down at the table, staring at the last sat-scan I'd set down.

No matter what,  I couldn't affect what was happening at the Group Area.

Cromwell and Stillwater were cut off from all support, even each other.

I sighed and coughed, swallowing the blood.

Brubaker moved over and started making coffee, staying silent. She set my nerves completely on edge. It wasn't her professionalism, it wasn't her competence.

It was knowing who she worked with.

SPC Charleston pushed her way into the tent.

"Chief Henley," She was obviously excited. Her face pale and her freckles standing out.

"What do you want, you bovine mouth breathing retard?" I snapped.

"The MP's are here. Apparently they're arresting Colonel Harmon, Major Dryer, and Sergeant Major Halloway, something about child molestation," She said, panting. I could tell that she'd ran all the way over to the tent. "They've got warrants from CID."

I. Will. Erase. You. From. Existence.

I made a mental note not to fuck with Uncle Creepy.

"Never mind those retards. Go back to commo and get ahold of all the sites, I want a complete sit-rep sent by courier to me. Find someone who knows how to get to each site and have them check out a vehicle. Go kick some of the First Mag faggots awake and tell them they get to ride shotgun and act as the courier," I stared at the sat-scan of Atlas, noting that the USSR had moved in a handful of BMP's and some of those shitty SCUD series missile launchers back behind the hill where they thought the idiots at Atlas wouldn't notice.

Pre-staging.

I longed to slap the button. Make all of Eastern Europe vanish up it's own vodka swilling sister fucking Lenin worshipping assholes in a blaze of nuclear fire.

To give all those fucking civilians hiding behind the bodies of my men what they deserved.

Nothing.

Instead, I went back to staring uselessly at the sat scans and waiting for a sit-rep from all the sites.