2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
30 October, 1987
0700 Hours

The sun had risen after I had left the barracks.

I knew what was going to happen next. I didn't need any fancy sat-com bullshit to get orders, to get warnings. I knew what the next play was. Of the mountain, of life. It was the next play, that didn't require my survival to ensure maximum bloodshed. The most amount of blood for the minimum effort was the mountain's goal.

The snow was sparkling and I was glad I had made sure to keep the polarized overlay for my goggles. It brought the glare of the sun down to a reasonable level. Made sure my one remaining eye wasn't blinded.

I'd taken the time to set things up, get ready for what I knew was going to happen now.

The cigarette tasted good, the nicotine moving through my bloodstream to help ease the pain of the injuries I'd taken that hadn't quite healed.

My leg was going to require surgery to rebuild it. It was in worse condition than my shoulder, even though my shoulder had taken a gunshot wound recently. I was pretty sure that my thigh was fractured, probably along the length. God knew I shouldn't even have a leg, that I was goddamn lucky it was just bone damage instead of it being severed at mid-thigh.

Still, I was alive, and that was more than could be said for a lot of other people.

I sighed, popping the last of the chocolate covered brownie into my mouth and stuffing the foil wrapper into my pocket.

I could hear low voices now.

They were almost here.

I'd positioned myself in a  bottleneck. The ridges came to a point right there, making an opening only six feet wide, the first flat spot in nearly six hundred feet. From here AWOL Trail was only about three hundred meters out, but I'd laid Claymores at the head of it. Anyone coming up it would run into them.

I'd laid over a dozen traps along the trail.

I knew Henley, knew SOG, and understood Rangers. There was no way any Ranger commander who gave a shit about his men would send them up AWOL Trail with the slightest chance that I was still running around.

Mining AWOL Trail was part of 2/19th METL. It was part of our pre-conflict orders. Any Ranger team leader would know that I would mine the ever loving shit out of it.

Just to be an asshole I'd mixed chlorine, bleach, and sulfuric acid into half gallon bottles and set them in front of the Claymores.

Enjoy that.

I could hear someone grunting, heard the sound of a hammer on a piton, then the sharp whir of a climbing cord being threaded.

My guests were almost here.

...terminate with extreme prejudice...

I watched as the snow covered glove came up over the edge, holding a climbing pick, then grinned as the person wielding it pulled themselves up and over the edge.

His eyes widened when he saw me sitting there in the snow, on top of my extreme cold weather poncho, the M-14 battle rifle in my hands.

"Why hello there," I said brightly. He opened his mouth and I hurried up. "Get all the way up here, then call down to them to hold position."

The guy nodded slowly, keeping his hands in view.

Hold position. The Americans were waiting for us, he said in Russian. The fact that I'd learned Russian from Bomber over the last few years wasn't in any files, so I knew he didn't know I knew it.

"I imagine that you thought your prize was unguarded, didn't you?" I said, pulling the cold weather mask down so he could see me. "There, now you can see who I am."

His eyes widened.

"Yeah, you're Vympel. Again. Jesus, you guys just don't learn, do you?" I smiled at him.

"What will happen now?" He asked.

I shrugged. "Depends on you. If you read my file, you know I've got my crew with me," He nodded slowly at that. "You also know I have no qualms about killing you," Again, he nodded. "So if you were thinking you could take me out and have a clear shot at your objective..." I let it trail off.

"Are we your prisoners?" He asked. He had a Nebraskan accent, "If so, I demand my men be treated according to the Geneva Convention as enemy combatants."

I shrugged again. "That depends on you. Have a seat."

He sat.

"You know what's sitting there, right?" I asked him.

"American nuclear tank rounds. Built for your Abrams tank to fight our tanks," He said. "We were to take one, bring it back."

I nodded slowly. "Worth the risk. High tech rounds, latest stuff. Lowered radiation, quasi-directional burst, enhanced thermal bloom." His eyes widened. "Yeah, latest hot shit DARPA anti-tank rounds," I was lying, but he wouldn't know that. "Goddamn scientists figured out how to make a shape charge with a nuke instead of it being omnidirectional. But you knew that, didn't you?"

He nodded again, and I could tell he had swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

"Got a canteen cup?" I asked him, lifting mine up. He nodded. "Move slowly, no misunderstandings, my sniper is a bit twitchy."

He handed me his cup and I took it from him, pouring some from my second canteen into his cup, then mine.

"Jack Daniels, from Tennessee," I told him.

"My thanks," He said, sipping it. He made a face.

"Yeah, instant coffee and water mixed in with it too. Sorry," I told him. He nodded and took another drink.

"What are you planning?" He asked me. "Are we prisoners?"

I shook my head. "You don't want that. To keep you prisoner on this mountaintop would be a war crime. I'm a monster, but I'm very well aware that shooting you all in the face would be merciful to spending the rest of this winter on this mountaintop with me."

I could tell by his expression that he didn't understand, not really. He was just thinking of the weather he and his men had climbed that cliff face through.

The only climbable cliff face.

"This is your one warning this winter," I told him, smiling at him. I reached up, pushing my parka hood back, then pulling off my cold weather cap. He stared, watching me closely as I pulled the bandage off my head and let him see my ruined eye.

The lizard's boards lit up. All of them.

"If you come back, I will take your men, I will capture those I do not kill, and I will sacrifice them to my Celtic gods," I told him.

The lizard took the shiny new red button and carefully pressed it into place. It locked with a click that charged my system full of chemicals.

Pain vanished, doubt vanished, fear vanished. Cool fire slid down my spine and the shaking in my limbs smoothed out. My thigh, knee, and shoulder went from burning fiery pain to the dull throbbing of rubbing ice-chips.

The Soviet special forces soldier in front of me paled. I knew he'd read my briefing, just like I knew that a traitor in the 2/19th ranks had sold our files to the KGB and he would have read about all of it.

...blood for Lugus!...

"This is the only chance, only warning, you'll get," I told him. "Stay off my goddamn mountain. Do you understand?"

He nodded slowly, and I could see the fear in his eyes as he stared at my face, at the lizard watching him through my ruined eye.

"Say it," I growled.

"We will leave this place. We will not return. We will tell our commander that Echo-Five-Actual guards this place with knives and guns," He swallowed thickly, "We will tell them that you have vowed that all who return to your mountain will be used in blood rituals to your Gods."

Thunder rumbled from somewhere and he shivered with something that had nothing to do with the icy cold or thin air.

"Tell your men to climb back down, and go with them," I said. I turned and pulled a Claymore from out of the snow. "The way back is mined to drop the snow pack down the cliff," I grinned wider, "Do you know what mustard gas is?"

Again, he nodded, licking his lips nervously.

"I've modified the mines with some chemicals, including chlorine, ammonia, and hydrochloric acid," I lied. "When they explode, or your step on the glass containers, the chemicals will mix, and mustard gas will kill everyone on the downslope."

He swallowed thickly, then took a long drink off of his canteen cup, draining it.

"I'm not playing. I'm not screwing around with any of you. I catch you on this mountain, and you will die in the worst way imaginable," I told him as he put his canteen cup away.

I pointed at the ridge. "Give your men the order and git."

He moved back to the ridge.

"We must go back. Our intelligence was wrong. Echo-Five-Actual is not at their site, they are here, and they have booby trapped the way up with chemical weapons and are waiting in ambush for us," he said.

"Are you sure, Comrade Colonel?" someone asked.

"Corporal Stillwater is here, and where he is, the rest of his men are not far behind," The soldier in front of me said.

There was some muttering, and the minutes went by slowly until he turned and looked at me.

"My men have begun their descent," He told me. "Do you swear that you will allow us to leave?"

I smiled nice and wide. "No more blood, pumpkin. I've had a hard winter, I'd rather just let you go. We can kill each other later, on the battlefield instead of on this accursed mountain."

He looked doubtful but nodded.

We were silent while he hooked back up his climbing gear so he could rappel and climb down the cliff.

I waited until he was getting ready to drop further down the side. "Hey, pumpkin?"

He looked up at me, holding on to the lip of the cliff.

"Just to keep you honest, I have the nuclear rounds set for detonation. If we don't input a keycode every two hours, they gang fire. Might want to think about that on your way down the cliff and if your GRU control gives you the order to try again," I smiled.

He nodded slowly, his eyes wide.

"Good, you know I'll do it. You understand I won't hesistate," I smiled. "So, you know those M1 tanks we have in the motorpool?"

Again, he nodded silently.

"I have a crew in one of those tanks, a round in the chamber," I told him. "At this elevation, with this angle, the round has a maximum range of ten miles, far enough to rain nuclear hell on the Gap and prevent anyone from using it for 5,000 years. You understand?"

Again, he nodded.

"Good. Now git," I growled.

He climbed down.

The canteen gurgled as I poured the rest of my canteen into the canteen cup. I'd need to wait a while. I figured long enough to have a couple of cigarettes and consider my next moves.

The lizard released the button halfway through my cigarette and a sharp twinge of pain rippled out from my knee, washing over my thigh and leaving ground glass in its wake.

It was a complicated gamble, a carefully calculated risk. It had probably taken months or years for the full story, as far as we had been willing to admit, to percolate back to the Soviet Union. For months all they knew is that their strike team, a full company of Vympel, had gotten to the barracks and then simply vanished. Killed, no, obliterated by a tenth of their number.

Then the rumors would have been picked up by the KGB through bar-talk and pillow-talk. Probably the first thing they had heard about was Aine tearing out a man's throat with her teeth and riding him down, drinking his blood, screaming out ancient war cries.

I knew that the KGB and the GRU would look up who Lugus was, and find out he was an ancient Celtic war-god, God of the hunt, and more.

Then they'd learned how we'd won. The sheer ugliness of the fight. How we went into it knowing that we wouldn't come out, that we'd be trading our lives for little more than to destroy the records and kill as many of them as we could.

The gamble was that they'd put together a profile on me based on everything they could gather through espionage and observation. They undoubtably had a thick file on my family. They'd be criminally negligent even if it just my Father, not to mention everyone else in my family.

They would see worship of old Gods, seasonal ceremonies, and witchcraft all wrapped through it all.

I was banking on the fact the GRU and KGB would take my threat seriously to sacrifice whoever came up here to those old Gods. That I considered Alfenwehr my mountain now. That anyone who I felt was intruding on my domain would be not only killed, but sacrificed to those old Gods.

It was one thing to be killed in battle, another to be sacrificed and have your soul offered to ancient blood gods. The former was part of the risk of putting on the uniform. The latter was something that kicked in ancient superstitions and fears.

...terminate with extreme prejudice...

I was hoping that the KGB and GRU would assume that the pressures of Atlas, of Alfenwehr, of Special Weapons, had driven me crazy and now I was blood crazy and just waiting to break my oaths and controls to use NBC weapons, to sacrifice people to those Gods.

I was lying.

It was just a psy-op, just like I'd been trained for.

Nothing else.

Right?