GrafenwöhrUS Army Training Area
Training Site 22
2/19th Company Area
West Germany
29 October, 1987
2100 Hours

I stared at the company map, my fist clenched and pressed against the top of the foldable field table, glaring at it with all the hatred I could muster.

The data didn't change.

Over fifty 175kt nuclear tank rounds sitting unsecured in the goddamn motorpool, left there by those goddamn monkeys from 21st Transportation Battalion. I fully planned on having someone's head chopped off so I could mount it on my office wall for that fuckup.

NBC Warfare was not a goddamn joke, it was not some bullshit that I sent men like Stillwater out to goddamn die for just so I could get medal, and having some goddamn REMF  truckers treat it like a fucking joke enraged me.

The tent flap moved and I didn't bother look up. I knew who it was.

That goddamn cold blooded Blackbriar bitch.

She came up and put her hand on top of the map, blocking my view.

"Most that sloppy cunt smelling clit rubber of yours, you goddamn nickle whore," I snarled, lifting my fist and slamming my knuckled in the middle of her hand before setting my fist back down on the table.

The hand yanked back.

"Chief Henley, nothing give you the right to physically," she started.

I didn't lift my eyes from the map. "If you keep wobbling around that low rent cock sucking device at me and gabbling syllables you don't understand, polluting this tent with the smell of dog jizz and stupidity with your breath, I will personally reach down your throat and yank out those rotted hunks of flesh you call ovaries," I snapped,

"Chief Henley, nothing in the UCMJ requires me to be subjected," She started.

I looked up at her.

She was young, looked younger than even those drunken halfwits I had consigned to slow death by chemical and radiation exposure by sending them out to live and work at the hot sites, even though she was probably older. Her black hair was pulled into a bun, light makeup on her face, blue eyes, her uniform spotless but without any patches but the US ARMY strip over her heart. Her expression was outraged and her eyes wide with shock.

"Shut. Your. Whore. Mouth," I snapped. "I am busy and your yapping distracts me."

She got a look at my expression and her mouth snapped shut.

"Better," I told her.

I just snorted and looked back at the map, then reached over and slid the sat-scan of the area over the map, aligning it perfectly, then the report from Naval Weather Service.

"Chief Henley," she tried again, obviously trying to get my attention.

A low pressure system was moving toward Alfenwehr, and NWS estimated another six feet of snow at the elevations less than 20,000 feet, that the winds would reach sustained speeds 55 kph, which meant that Stillwater would be out there in extreme conditions. I knew that the snow wouldn't be piling up on him, but would be preventing Stillwater from withdrawing.

And the eight man Ranger team that those goddamn idiots had sent up the mountain would be buried under more snow, gaurenteeing that nobody would find their stupid corpses until some daughter fucking box-head hiker found their bodies while chasing a boar to fuck.

"Chief Henley," She almost shouted, slamming her hand down on the mimeographed plastic overlay of the view from the satellites, and I knew the heat from her over-used clit rubbers would be damaging my plasticized see-through data sheet.

I looked up, glaring.

"What the fuck do you want?" I snarled at her.

He opened her mouth and I continued, not willing to hear whatever goat-like bleating came out of that rancid pit she called a mouth when it wasn't wrapped around the nearest promotion capable cock.

"I am trying to ensure that my sole mobile asset has the maximum amount of advantages I can give him in order to carry out the mission your incompetent fuckups dropped on me," I kept saying, "So whatever this is, it better be more important than fifty-six tactical nuclear rounds and the lives of thirteen of my troops, you shit eating baboon."

"Chief Henley, while nobody seems to have explained to you military courtesy," she started.

"You can speak to me with authority when you've been here longer than forty-five days," I snapped at her. "Just because you've been sitting behind a cushy desk with your ass getting wider and wider and reading abstracts on what has been happening to my men doesn't mean you understand jack or shit about the fucked up situations this unit has been tasked with resolving."

The tent flap moved again and Private Jennison came in, shivering. She had snow dusting her field jacket and equipment, as well as the cardboard tube she was holding. It was covered in stickers and sealed at both ends, and I could see "NIS" on the side.

"Mister Henley, new satellite scans of the group area," She said, moving up and handing me the tube. "They said there was something important on slide six." When I took it she did an about face and left the tent.

I nodded to her, ignoring whatever that cold blood Blackbriar bitch was griping about as I broke the seals and shook the tube so that roughly ten plastic overlays slid out of the tube. I thumbed through until I got to number six and looked up at her.

"Move that goddamn hand before I chop it off and your dyke lover will have to have the nearest bum fist her so she can feel something in that cavern she calls a cunt," I told him.

She jerked back from me, his face turning red, but I ignored her, slapping down the transparency and picking up a magnifying glass.

"Now shut the fuck up while I figure out what is going on," I stated, looking over the overlay.

The barracks were still under snow. The CIA listening post was only visible by the upper quarter of the antenna. The motorpool was visible, someone had cleaned off the roof. The Chow Hall had...

I used the magnifying glass to take a closer look.

There were four tiny figures laying in the snow, toward the ridge line. I looked at the way they had fallen and checked the ridge line. There, right at the  edge, a tiny figure barely visible on the scan. The snap had caught him on the move, slightly blurred, but I knew what I was seeing.

Stillwater.

I looked up at the timestamp.

An hour and a half ago.

"Good boy," I said softly to myself. Engaging him in that goddamn snowy hellscape was the dumbest thing that they could do.

I looked up at the Blackbriar Rep as she shifted position and asked another goddamn question. "Chief Henley, what is the status on securing those rounds?"

I shook my head, "They're as secure as they are going to be until all hostile elements are cleared."

"I assume that you are counting on the Ranger team arriving to help secure the weapons," she said primly.

That made me laugh. "Your Ranger team? If their commander is stupid enough to send them up the mountain into the teeth of a blizzard, the entire team has frozen to death or died of exposure to extreme conditions," I bared my teeth at her, "If their CO was stupid enough to kill all of his men, that's on him. And you."

She shook her head, pursing her lips, "Members of 75th Rangers and Special Operations Group are among the most highly trained, capable, and experienced in the United States military."

That made me shake my head. "None of that matters up there, you stupid slag," I snapped, "You sent those men and sentenced them to death. You have no idea what the conditions on that mountain are like."

"All of those men have had mountaineering training and experience at cold weather operations," She said, her eyes narrowing.

"And where did you pull them from?" I asked mildly.

"Fort Benning, Georgia," She smiled.

She didn't see it coming. Hell, even Stillwater's inbred hick ass would have known that was a trap, and he routinely made some of the stupidest mistakes I'd ever seen.

"So, they had moutaineering training sometimes in their career, probably at Fort Erwin, they underwent cold weather survival training, probably at Fort Drum, and then you moved them out of Fort Benning?" I asked, still mildly. "How long had they been at Fort Benning?"

"They have been training for the last six months in guerilla warfare, so every soldier is ready for duty," she smiled, thinking she had outmanuevered me.

"So you took them, from a hot climate, at almost sea level, training for operations Central America," I took a breath, "AND SENT THEM TO ONE OF THE MOST HOSTILE PLACES ON THE GODDAMN PLANET!"

I reached out, grabbed the side of her hair, and yanked her head down to the NWS report, holding her head so that her nose almost touched it. She screamed, but I ignored it.

"Look at that! LOOK AT IT! Ambient temperature at twenty degrees below zero. Sustained winds at thirty-five miles per hour with gusts up to seventy miles per hour. That means wind-chill is between negative sixty and negative ninety! Air pressure has dropped signifigantly, putting the top of the mountain at lethal levels for low oxygen content." I let go of her hair, shoving her back at the same time. "Your goddamn smarmy fucking 'I know everything about anything' just went and killed an entire Ranger team because the only thing you know about is how to suck cock for rank, you worthless goddamn snail trail."

She staggered back, one hand going to her head to rub her scalp. Her eyes were full of tears and I snorted.

"Gonna cry now, you weak willed bitch? That's why women don't belong in the fucking military beyond camp whores and secretaries," I told her, "You think your hurt feelings matter more then the lives of the men you just killed. Don't tell me your head hurts, your hair gets pulled more than that at whatever gangbang some retarded pilots paid you to be the center of attention of and we both fucking know it."

"I couldn't be sure Sergeant Stillwater would..." she started.

I laughed, "Couldn't be sure he wouldn't kill anyone he found on that mountain? You are fucking stupider than you look, which I thought would be impossible if you had a functioning brain stem." I picked up my pack of Camels and shook one out. "Tell me what you know of him."

She wiped her eyes and snuffled and I found myself hating her weakness, the urge to grab my M-16 and pound the stock into her face until there was nothing left but red ruin filling me, kept back by my sheer vitriol at life in general.

"Just what my briefing covered," She said, sniffling again. Again, I wanted to flatten her nose with the butt of my rifle, "Joined at 16, falsifying his age, court ordered entry into the US military. Finished basic training, signed up for Special Weapons in a qualifying AIT, class of 1983. No distinguishing honors. After AIT he stationed at 2/1t9h Special Weapons Group working with nuclear and chemical rounds at a depot." She shrugged. "What's to know. He's like every other NBC Warfare guy out there. More balls than brains, and little more than a glorified stock clerk. No awards, letters of merit, or anything else to mark anything more than a barely adequate career."

I just stared at her. "That's the file you were given?"

She nodded, "It was little more than an average Ammunition Specialist with a little extra schooling to make him feel like the elite or some macho bullshit." She looked particularly smug at that last bit.

"The file, did you bring it with you?" I asked her. She nodded and I tapped the desk. "Place it right here."

While she set it down I turned around and moved over to the safe. I squatted down, spun the dial to the numbers of the day each of the special people in my life were born, then opened it up. It took me a second to find Stillwater's file, which was two file folders taped together. When I turned around she had the file open, smiling that smug smile at me, which was at complete odds with the hatred I could see hidden in them.

Fuck her, she could hate me all she wanted, the stupid slag.

Stillwater's basic entry picture stared back at me when I looked at the file. It wasn't the man I'd seen just a handful of days prior. No scarring on his face. Wide, almost innocent green eyes with a little bit of lingering pain in them from something bad in his childhood. Short blond hair in a severe military flat-top, a legacy of his adopted father. He was smiling, those big farmboy teeth white and strong.

And still real.

Two sheets of data. Little more than weapon qualification scores, test scores, and little else.

I shook my head and dropped the file folder on the table.

"I'll show you a single that you're probably authorized to see. Not the rest of the file. Lord, save me from goddamn idiots," I opened the file, which contained multiple pictures of him taken over the last few years as his appearance changed.

She stared at the pictures, and I knew what she was seeing. The baby-fat melting off his face after AIT. How his face became older, harder. How one of his eyes ended up with the white turning blood red with another picture showing him wearing the eye patch. Pockmarks from shrapnel. New teeth to replace the ones he had lost.

"Does that look like a glorified stock boy to you?" I asked, tapping his PRP picture that had been taken in August. "Men don't end up looking like that just counting bullets in a depot."

She looked up, her face pale. "It was suggested I reach out to you for additional information," she started.

"That should have been your first thing, dumbass, instead of spending your first twenty-four hours here cruising dyke clubs and licking pussy at the Bachelor Officer Quarters in Fulda," I snapped. "Kill Shop knew you were coming before you boarded the plane at Blackbriar Ridge. Major Ryder at S-2 prepared a briefing for you. When you did not arrive within three hours of leaving Rhien-Mien Military Air Field Kill Shop set CID to looking for you."

I shook my head. "Imagine our disappointment when once again a female officer does little more than think with that dripping axe wound between her legs," I locked eyes with her. "Meanwhile, my men were being ambushed, harried, and split apart. I have ten pregnant women, two chapters, and a Special Weapons Field Surgery Medic trapped in an underground facility, and you and your Blackbriar idiots forced me, by orders from the goddamn Joint Chiefs, to have  a goddamn walking talking butcher's cleaver attempt to secure the site with maximum prejudice because they made the mistake of thinking that goddamn psychotic animal Stillwater was just a fucking man."

I dropped Cromwell's file. "Heard of her?"

She shook her head.

"Yeah, well you should have."

She licked her lips, staring at Stillwater's picture from August. Medals covered his chest, the kind won in combat zones instead of bending over for Congressmen and members of the Armed Forces Committee to plow whatever hole they wanted.

"What do you mean 'just a man'?" She asked.

I stared at her, then reached forward and tapped the picture with two fingers. "Because that isn't a man any more, you stupid bitch."

"What is he?"

I shrugged. "He's a weapon, just like Blackbriar intended," I closed the folder, "He's been shot, blown up, stabbed, had a parachute malfunction and fell twenty-five thousand feet, and was left then fifty feet away from a bunker when it exploded in the kiloton range, yet here he is."

I moved the folder and tapped the map. "And here he is, in temperatures that would kill a Sherpa, slaughtering anything in his way, with the full intention of securing those nuclear weapons by any means necessary."

I put my fists back on the table, leaning toward her and holding my cigarette between my teeth.

"Including, if necessary, detonating them to keep the Soviet Union from acquiring them."

Her face went pale.

"That's why you were stupid, to authorize him to use any means necessary," I told her. "Which means, because you couldn't wait to have that swampy kalamari smelling gash between your legs tongued by some fat squashed face dyke, you didn't come up with any plan, and tried to cover it with the dumbest goddamn orders I have ever heard."

I turned away from her, moving over to the radio to sit down.

"And now you left me to pick up the pieces."

She fled the tent, and I knew it was to call her superiors at Blackbriar. She'd try to throw me under the bus, probably Stillwater too.

She'd find it really hard to get me under the bus. I'd spent too many years at the Pentagon and at Blackbriar Ridge for her to have the patrons and sponsors to so much as budge me from this punishment duty.

As for Stillwater, well...

Good luck facing off against the Old Man of SOG.