2/19th Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
06 30

It was still dark and cold as Hell's Icebox on the surface of the snow. I didn't have snowshoes so I had to walk slowly. The glacier had calved recently and I was moving across the shattered ice sheet slowly. It had been almost forty feet thick and I'd had to climb up the ice, using my knife instead of the ice axe I so desperately needed.

Group was behind me as I moved across the air field, past the empty hangars and quonset huts that normally would have the helicopters and gear on loan from 11th ACR. There was a War Fight system under the operations control building, but I knew it would be useless for me. It had ammunition for the helicopters and crew, as well as survival areas for the crews up at the airfield to ride out a near nuclear hit.

What I needed was at the far end, where a C-150 had crashed two years ago. The engines had failed upon takeoff, for who knows what reason, and it had just slammed into the ground, the wings breaking off, the engines snapping off the wings, the fuselage cracking down the length and the  tail section breaking off. It was a few hundred meters past the end of the air strip, and the Air Force had yanked the avionics, some salvage, and the engines and left the rest.

Why bother hauling garbage out of Hell, right?

I expected it to be buried under snow, but as I got to the edge of the ice sheet I could see the plane clearly. It was completely exposed, the paint cracked and peeled.

I almost lost it climbing down the ice sheet when a section wobbled, but I managed to hold my grip on the knife.

I needed proper gear.

As soon as I got off the ice sheet the wind hit me, damn near killed me. It was whipping in from the north, skating around the peak, and slicing across the edge of the airfield. That wind sheer was dangerous as hell for flying, we'd lost two Blackhawks and a Chinook to it, and it damn near picked me up off the ground and threw me against the forty foot sheer ice cliff.

I hunched over, fighting the wind as it sliced straight through my clothing. My balls throbbed and erupted in fiery pain, my face went ice cold, and my mouth went numb. Still, I kept moving forward through the dark and cold. A two hundred foot walk took me nearly ten feet of staggering side to side, getting pushed back two steps for every three feet I went forward. My face was nothing but burning pain under the numbness. My skull felt like jagged glass under the skin, but I kept moving.

My makeshift knee brace kept me from going face first into the ice, frozen grass, or tarmac the times my knee gave out. At least the cold had numbed the pain in the joint and in my thigh, although the pain had spread steadily up into my hip.

Getting inside the shattered fuselage was like stepping into a sauna as the wind-chill cut out. I stood there for a moment, letting my body heat flush through my body, let my heart push warm blood from my core into the outer section of my torso and into my limbs.

I knew I had to get moving again or I'd stand there until I froze to death. I staggered through the wreckage, heading for the cockpit. The wind ripping across the broken part of the fuselage about knocked me down, only the fact my knee was locked in the brace kept me from falling over. Pain flared in my hip but the lizard slapped one of the buttons and I was able to ignore the pain and keep moving. The cockpit was closed and I reached under a damaged plate and pulled out a small crowbar. I slammed the wedge into the gap and popped the cockpit door open. The seats were gone, the avionics were gone, but I knew what kind of condition the cockpit was in.

When I closed the door the wind cut off and I sagged against the wall, rubbing my arms through my insulated field jacket. I wanted to just lean against the metal wall, but I knew the cold of the wall was leeching my body heat away.

I moved up to the front of the cockpit and used the crowbar to pry aside the floor plate, sighing with relief at what was sitting there.

A heavy plastic  box that I knew had Farraday shielding inside. It had been used to hold one of the massive 80886 computers used by Kill Shop before me and the rest of Actual had destroyed them. I pulled the box out, grunting at the pain in my hip and ribs, and dragged it toward the rear of the cockpit. On either side were two more boxes, and I hauled them out too, then hauled out the duffle-bag with my last name and last four stenciled on it. Finally there was a rucksack with a waterproof bag attached to the bottom where a sleeping pad was wrapped around an extreme cold weather sleeping bag.

When I popped open the duffle I sighed in relief.

A full battle-rattle kit.

...every goddamn winter we end up under geared, under supplied, and hanging on a razor thin edge. I'm goddamn tired of it. We stock this shit, we cache this shit, and the next time this shit goes down, we'll be geared to kill anything on this mountain...

...but we need more than just winter shit, we all know that if we end up fighting it out with Russia, we're going to be the ones fighting in the fallout. Henley would be stupid not to use us. We pack this shit as not only a winter cache, we pack it to fucking fight World War III...

The clothing was dry, and more than just uniforms, two sets of extreme cold weather gear, food, a medical kit, and chemical warfare kit. I sat down on the rucksack and put my face in my hands, trying not to let everything overwhelm me. On the top was a note, written in strong even writing. "I love you Ant we'll make it through this baby" was still there from where Nancy shoved it into my ruck.

...goddamn you, Nancy Nagle, for leaving me alone when I need you so bad...

The feeling of betrayal, of loss, tried to wash over me, tried to pull me down, and I pushed it back, pushed it down, and slammed an iron door on it. The lizard jumped up and down on the metal plate on his floor until it snapped into place. He ran a quick bad-weld with a hand held torch while I turned my attention to more important things. I popped the latch on the heavy container normally reserved  for computer equipment and stared at everything inside of it.

When I'd taken over Atlas we had no idea the extant of the site or what had been left laying around. One of the previous NCOICs out there had been authorized an armory and we'd found the ruined the mini-bunker the second week out there. The small door had to be pulled off with Goliath, a big 100 ton tracked forklift, and most of the stuff inside was ruined, but we'd pulled out enough hardware to arm a platoon with gear.

We'd cut foam, added moisture absorbing packets taken out of electronics, and layered the weapons. There was an old XM-21 7.62mm NATO sniper rifle stripped all the way down and packed in after being covered in Cosmoline. What I wanted was right on the top.

Another pair of M1911A1 .45 ACP, an M-3 9mm grease gun, and on the second layer old M-14 battle rifles and two M-79 40mm grenade launchers. There were a couple of XM-16E3 rifles in there, but they didn't work worth a shit in my hands, I'd be more likely to shoot my own dick off.

I'd grown up using either a lever-action .30-.30 or an old M-14 for hunting, and I was a crack shot with either of them.

It would be nice to fire a weapon and actually hit something for a change.

I set aside the pair of pistols, the SMG, grenade launcher, and the battle rifle to clean, closed the case, and opened the second case.

Ammunition. Including 40mm grenades and a pair of bandoleers.

On the bandoleers had "I love you Ant" written on it in black Sharpie.

I pushed the feeling away. Ignored it. Shoved it away where it couldn't hurt me, where I'd been pushing it away since I'd gotten back from that shitstorm. I knew how to deal with it.

Aine had taught me when I was much much younger that girl's kisses hurt.

I opened the third one, looking at it.

...we're not going to be unprepared again, goddamn it. Luckily the guys from 10th Mountain owed me favors so we've got this...

Climbing gear, specifically alpine climbing gear. That meant D-rings, climbing cord, pitons, ice axes, cleats, everything I'd need to climb Alfenwehr.

I pulled out everything I knew I'd need, then reached back into the hole and grabbed Nagle's ruck and pulling it open. I needed more than the Combat Life Saver bag on the side of my ruck, I needed Nagles med supply. Vicoden, Percocet, morphine tabs, all the other stuff I'd need for any medical care.

I found her drug-pack and pulled open my ruck. I went through the pack real quick, finding a bottle labeled "Vicoden" and rattling two into my hand. I stared at them for a long moment, then dropped them back into the bottle.

The last thing I needed to do was dull my edge. I jammed the bottle into my pocket. I closed the boxes, put Nagle's pack where it had been, then closed the boxes, returned them into the cache, and replaced the panel. I put the drug pack into my ruck. I laid out the cold weather gear I needed, stripped naked, and got dressed again as fast as I could. I put my LBE, the pistols, and the SMG under the parka, made sure the M-14 and the M-79 were covered by the insulated poncho, and stared for a long time at the last item.

The extreme cold weather mask.

...Anthony, I love you...

I pulled it on almost savagely, pushing it all down where it couldn't touch me. I made sure I not only had two bottles of O2 on my harness, I put two more into my ruck, and a third on the side of my ruck where I could get to it easy.

Next was the place I'd need to fort up. It was a ways away, nearly a mile and a half, but unless you knew it was there you'd never find it.

Twp rolls of climbing cord over my head, the fireaxe off the sling, pitons and the rest on the rigging like the guys in 10th Mountain had shown me. Last but not least, snowshoes and climbing spikes on my boots. Satisfied that I was as ready as I was going to be I left the cockpit, closing the door and replacing the crowbar in it's hiding spot. I pulled the goggles down over my eyes, the light through the broken sections of the fuselage telling me that the sun had come up while I had geared up.

Satisfied that I was as ready as I was going to be I headed out, back out into the wind.

Even with the strap closed across my mouth and tilting my head it took my breath away. The wind had picked up even worse, and the sun had come up. If it wasn't for the goggles I'd be snowblind inside of a half hour.

Usually when I was this well geared I was on training runs. It felt good to climb the edge of the glacier with the proper tools and equipment. My spirits were pretty high as I crossed the ice sheet. Not even the absence of everyone I was used to having my back was bothering me.

It was weird. I felt free, like all the weight was lifted off of my shoulders.

Cromwell and the preggos could hold out. There was nobody to have my back, but there was nobody to worry about, nobody to see what I could become.

I was practically skipping after I came down off of the ice sheet and switched to the snowshoes. My shoulder hurt where I'd been stabbed all those years ago, my knee and hip hurt, and my ribs and inside my chest hurt, but I was actually feeling pretty good.

Instead of heading down toward the motorpool, along the road, which switchbacked three times so go five hundred vertical feet in fifteen hundred feet, I went right, into the woods. I kept the peak on my right, watching for a few landmarks I knew wouldn't be hidden by the snow.

Jackal's Face on the side of the cliff leading up the glacier went by and I knew I didn't have to go too much further.

The cliff bulged out and looked almost seemless, but I veered toward it anyway. Moving carefully through the trees, heading toward the cliff face. It would be easy to miss, the gap in the cliff face that led to a small pocket.

The gap between the sections of cliff face was only about twenty paces. Under the snow was a small pile of rocks that had been a makeshift wall at one point. There was a dogleg, then I knwe I was moving over another low wall.

But my destination was in sight.

It looked exactly the same as it had been when John and Nancy and I had found it. As far as we could tell nobody had found it for a long time.

Alfenwehr hosted 2/19th. Before that, it hosted the SS. Before that, it was an internment camp where thousands of Polish prisoners died of plague. Before that the Templars had made one of their last stands against the Catholic Church on this mountain where they had burned witches and werewolves in such numbers that smoke had blocked out the sun.

Everyone had left their mark on Alfenwehr, added their own wreckage and monuments to wasted lives, insanity, and murder. The Nazis had left the tunnels and the barrcks. The World War One internment camp had left behind mass graves and a monument.

The Templars had left the ruined fortress in front of me.