2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
1700 Hours

The grenade started hissing before it was even a handful of feet from me. I'd milked it, letting pressure off the spoon so that the striker had hit the fuze. I'd done it enough times I knew exactly how long to hold it. I'd started when she'd started talking, when I'd known she had seen there were enough people to back her up that she felt safe.

I was still going to saw her fucking ear off.

Yellowish white smoke spewed out, quickly blooming into the room. The grenade hit the far wall of the room, bounced, and arced out the door.

Everyone's eyes followed it as I bellowed out "GRENADE!" and kept moving forward.

Two stabs, two down, both of them just going limp with a sigh as the Gerber slid in through the back, found the heart, and slid back out. The guy on the end got his hand up, opened his mouth to scream, and the blade slid through his eye and into his brain before he could scream.

I was still moving.

"GAS!" someone got out.

The lizard was updating the targeting system as I came around the table.

...eliminate all personnel with extreme prejudice...

...goddamn you, Henley, you knew how this would play out...

Cut the man's throat, shift, the next woman was standing up, her mouth open to scream.

"GAS!" was all she got out before I stabbed her low, both sides, and moved on. Captain Rebel was standing up, her hands automatically going to her waist where he mask should have been.

It wasn't.

She screamed as I dragged her backwards, onto the floor, going down with her.

Bullets howled overhead, shattering the windows, letting in the snow which poured in.

I grabbed her ear and twisted,

...sorry, I lied...

pushed my forearm against her head as someone else stood up and caught bullets that were probably meant for me, and twisted harder.

Her ear came off in my hand.

People were coughing, gagging.

"GAS! GAS GAS!" someone finally choked out.

I threw another CS grenade over the table, and followed it with a third. Captain Rebel was screaming, holding onto the side of her head, but I ignored her to toss the CS grenades.

This wasn't how I had wanted it, wasn't how I wanted it to go down, but they'd forced it.

I'd known the minute I'd walked through the pantry that this was going to go down bad.

The smell of fried pork had been thick through the mess hall. I could taste on my tongue, feel it coating me.

The mess hall had exactly one week of MRE's for the entire Group, and I knew that they would have loaded roughly half into the trucks to take to Graf.

They'd been out of MRE's for a while, the propane tanks for the mess hall, if they were topped off, would have lasted a week, maybe two, if they were being used for heat. You'd have to bring the extra tanks up from the secure fuel locker, but with all the snow...

People were retching and coughing and the CS gas thick enough that it was making my one good eye tingle. I stood up and moved to the door. Someone lifted a rifle but I grabbed it out of his hands and buttstroked him before moving through the door. I could see a couple of people had put their shirts against their mouths, but that wouldn't save their eyes. Most of them were on their hands and knees, retching out thick ropes of saliva and mucus.

Repeated exposure had left me pretty much immune to CS. I'd been highly resistant to it in Basic Training, same with my brother, but exposure the concentrated powder over the last few years had made it so that except some prickling in my eyes and sinus cavity it had no effect. I pulled out the last of the CS grenades I brought with me and tossed it back toward the pantry.

Someone rushed at me and I just put my hand against their face and shoved them to the side.

I wouldn't have to kill them all separately.

Someone else leveled a rifle and I stepped to the side, moving past them.

They fired into the smoke anyway.

What did I care? Don't bother validating your target, don't bother to check your goddamn fire, go ahead and lay down all the friendly fire you want. It doesn't matter to me.

Someone at Blackbriar Ridge had run the numbers, had told Henley what needed to be done, and Henley had told me.

And I'd been stupid enough to think there was another way out of it.

It wasn't like the other times. My blood didn't feel hot, my muscles weren't almost humming, I wasn't running rapid-fire through all the decision trees.

The CS gas had filled the kitchen and the pantry and I just walked through the gap between the fry line and where the trays were always set down for the cooks to pick up and start slapping our food on it.

The last time I'd walked down the line, I'd had two 5-egg omlettes with ham, bacon, sausage, mushroom, green peppers, double cheese, tomato, green onions, red onions, white onions, and salsa.

For a second I could taste it over the tang of the CS.

Two came at me, both went down, almost like my body was running on automatic. Ingrained reflexes, hours of practice...

...and all too much live action.

There was no emotional content as I moved in on the next one, who was coughing, pawing at his eyes with one hand, the rifle held by the forward handgrip with the other. I grabbed his wrist, shoved the blade between his radius and ulna, twisted it, pulled it fee and shoved him away.

He dropped the rifle, screaming, grabbing his arm, and it pulled his buddy toward me. He was coughing, wiping his eyes with his forearm, trying to see me.

I went by him and stabbed him in the ass. He staggered away screaming.

The back door blew open when I kicked it in the seam. Wind blew in, one guy turned to face me and I slashed him quick across the face, turning and stopping the rifle from buttstroking me in the side of the head with my left hand, the butt hitting my palm with a meaty smack. The female soldier who swung it stared, her face a dim pale blur in the darkness. Her mouth was opening and I dropped four inches of the Gerber's blade into her right breast and yanked it out at an angle.

She lost interest in the fight.

I'd lost interest in it before it had even started.

I was letting the lizard run the fight, running on automatic and training.

My brain was running other numbers as I moved up the ramp, tossing my last grenade, a high concentrate thermal masking white smoke behind me.

It had been easy, too easy. I was moving faster than I was used to, more power in my limbs, my chest and shoulder were stabbed through with icicles and I could feel that cold dark feeling at the base of my skull.

I knew they'd try to track me, but if they tried at night, and it was snowing already, and they came after me in the snow and the dark and the cold, the lizard would kill them.

If Aflenwehr didn't get to them first.

The darkness swallowed me up and for a split second I had the weirdest urge.

To go still, in the dark, let the snow swirl around me. Let myself go still, let the snow and wind wrap around me, blanket me, and pull me down into the snow where I could be still.

The lizard hissed at that idea, snarled at it, and hit my system to charge my blood with O2 and adrenaline. Sparks shot out from under his control and he kicked the cover twice before it fell off.

My right arm went numb and my left knee buckled.

More sparks shot out of his panels as I went down on one knee, lowering my head and gasping. I undid a button on my parka, sliding my and inside and pulling out the O2 bottle. Gasping, I put the rubber ended straw in my mouth and twisted the nozzle. Cold air hissed into my mouth with that odd tang that nitrogen O2 mix has.

Behind me someone fired off a magazine into the darkness.

None of the bullets came near me.

...something is wrong...

First, pulling the face mask back on, pulled the hood up, and made sure the goggles were set. Satisfied with that, I pulled on the glove liners and the trigger mittens then I struggled to my feet, pushing my way through the snow.

They were shouting now. They'd pick up my trail in the snow.

...good...

Something shorted out on the lizard's panels and I got  sharp pain behind my left eye, a flash of color in it that made me nauseous as spotted the trees. My knee went out again and I went down on all fours, spitting copper out. No blood, just spit. I retched once as something in my guts squirmed and the pain behind my eye flared again.

Another full mag howled off into the darkness.

Again, they were shooting at shadows or something the mountain sent against them.

I managed to get my feet back under me, staggering toward the tree.

The sounds behind me changed, stopped being blind fire. Someone was shouting, trying to be heard over the howling wind. I stopped, leaning against the tree as I caught my breath.

Knives driving into my chest with each breath.

I knelt down, sweeping the snow away. The whole thing stunk, for some reason I'd gone from having my shit together to barely able to breath, from feeling strong as hell to feeling weak and shakey.

I wasn't wounded, I knew that. Not beyond my knee and the deep burning pain from where Cromwell had told me I'd been stabbed good.

Weapons. Ruck. Snowshoes. Don't hurry, be methodical. Speed kills. Haste bring sweat, sweat turns to ice, ice turns to hypothermia.

Looking back I could flashlights. Panning down at the snow, then toward me.

They had my tracks.

I didn't have long.

I moved smoothly, steadily. Letting training and reflex do the work. It only took a few minutes. They were still struggling through the snow, still behind me. They'd be fighting the snow, the snowshoes let me move on top of it.

Standing up I started heading out, heading up, toward the ridgeline and the trees. I knew they'd follow me, follow my trail, keep after me.

It all felt wrong, I should have had John and Nancy behind me. I had Cromwell, but she was doing her job, she was carrying through with the mission I had tasked her with.

Someone fired off a burst, and I heard the bullets chop into a tree. Off to my right, into the trees. The yelling started again, and I knew they were heading for me.

...first lesson, do not pursue an enemy on his home territory...

The lizard was still running the show. My thoughts were scattered, I couldn't lock them down like I had in the chow-hall. I hadn't mean to go all Freddy Krueger on them, but it had kind of happened that way.

...damn you, Henley...

We, the lizard and I, kept heading toward the ridge-line, through the trees. We knew where we were going, heading straight for the little easy way up the ridge where I'd left the climbing pitons still hammered into the ice and rock.

Behind me was an explosion, and the screams began as they hit the wire and pulled the piece of cardboard from between the wire-wrapped ends of the clothespin, completing the circuit on the 9V battery and firing off the blasting caps I double-welled for redundancy in the Claymore.

The packed ball bearings had killed who knows how many, but I could hear four different voices screaming in pain. I picked up the pace slightly, the lizard urging me on with blood dripping from his fangs. Step. Shake the snow off the snowshoe by wiggling my foot. Step. Shake.

My left thigh was starting to burn with pain. My knee was full of ground glass.

I finally reached the point against the ridgeline and quickly swapped out the snowshoes, throwing them over my shoulders, and attached the climbing spikes to my boots.

It took me less than five minutes to swarm up the cliff-face and onto the ridge.

I laid down at the edge of the ridge and lifted up the M-14A1 battle rifle. I took the covers off the scope, rolled onto my side, and socked the rifle into my shoulder. I exhaled twice, cleared my mind, and slowly rolled onto my stomach.

The scope, it probably had a nomenclature that Little-Bit could rattle off in that detached voice she always used, brought the flashlights into focus. I sighed and relaxed myself, controlling my breathing.

My heartbeat slowed down as I pushed everything away.

I could visualize them. They had only field jackets and liners and black gloves. They would be shivering in the cold, their breath pluming out in front of them, snow sticking to their face and clothing. They would be cold, angry that I had not only brutalized their chain of command but escaped. The Claymore had forced them to fall back, but a few with flashlights were still pushing forward, following my trail.

The trigger mittens kept my middle, ring, and pinky finger together for warmth, and had a separate finger for my pointy finger. I kept my fingers together for warmth normally, and I slowly moved my finger into the gloved finger, moving it to the trigger.

I exhaled, the barrel slowly dropping.

It lined up with a backlit shape.

...now...