2/19th Special Weapons Group Barracks
Restricted Area - Western Germany
Early Winter - 1986
Ground Floor Game Room
Day: Sixteen

It was all a dream. It had to be. I had to be laying there on the cot, unconscious from having my head thunked with an axe handle, dreaming concussion nightmares. There was no way the LT could be there, I'd felt him die under my hands, I'd rammed the knife under his chin and into his brain, twisting it twice before pulling it loose. I'd felt him die!

But it wasn't, even as I stood stock still in disbelief, my brain unwilling to accept what my eyes were seeing, the LT still stubbornly refused to vanish into nightmare.

That axe came around, the cruel edge tearing into Hendricks' chest with an obscene sound. Hendricks had tried to throw himself out of the path, away from the axe, but his reflexes had been slowed by the sudden shock of the LT's appearance, of how he had kicked open the door, and the impossibility of the figure in front of us. He'd thrown his left arm up, but the axe whipped below it, slamming into his ribcage, and the sound was loud in the silence as his ribs snapped and the axe head sunk deep into the meat of his torso. Blood sprayed across my face, flecks of it hitting my glasses.

Nancy screamed, a sound of loss and pain, and I knew what she was reliving in that split second.

Jacobs. Dying on the table in an office, with Nancy powerless to do anything.

The blow spun Hendricks around, the axe tearing loose with another spray of blood.

I still hadn't moved. I was still focused on the LT, my brain trying to deny what was in front of me.

The LT's expression hadn't changed, still that maniacal grin, those glittering eyes set in the middle of circles of blackened flesh, the mud on his pantlegs, frost and ice in his hair and on his pant legs.

The axe continued its arc, and the LT pulled it back around so it crossed his body at port arms, still staring at us with that grin.

Hendricks was falling, a gurgling scream torn from him by the hideous axe wound I could see for a split second before his body spun.

Weaponsfire sounded out next to my ear, and the LT didn't even flinch, blood flying out from his back. The wood of the axe handle splintered as two rounds hit it.

The doors slammed shut, without the LT touching them, and the lights came back on so strongly that my eyes watered. Two rounds punched into the door, right where the LT had been, and I saw that Bomber was the one holding the weapon, his cheek pressed against the stock. The room was awash in white light, every light bulb on, and heat roared through the vent next to me, washing up my legs and almost burning my bare skin. Like usual, I barely felt anything on my back.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" At least five people yelled that in the brightness of the room.

Nancy had lunged forward, yelling Bomber and my names, pulling at Hendricks, getting his arm out of the way with almost brutal urgency, tearing his uniform open with one savage wrench to expose the wound.

"RALEIGH!" She shrieked, "Taggart, get my aid bag!" her voice was still an out of control scream as I ran forward, and grabbed Hendricks' legs. He was bucking, flailing, and my shoulder screamed in raw pain as I looped my arms so I had his ankles under my armpits, locking my hands on my wrist and flexing in order to pin his legs.

"Hold him, goddamn it!" Nancy screamed. "Taggart, hurry your pregnant ass up!" Raleigh had dropped down next to Nancy on her knees, her eyes wide and face pale as she saw the horrific wound on Hendricks' chest. Nancy didn't even look at her. "Raleigh, get in there, hold him down, goddamn it!"

Bomber dropped the weapon the floor and grabbed him, pulling his right arm out straight, slamming his foot into Hendricks armpit. Hendricks screamed again, and air bubbles boiled up in the wound. Taggart's face was wet as she dropped to her knees beside Nancy, the big aid bag with the medical symbol stenciled in white on it in her hands. Nancy didn't even look, just grabbed the bag with one hand and tearing it open as she narrowed her eyes, her gaze raking over the wound.

"Someone hold his other arm." Nancy's voice was flat, devoid of anything, the brittle edge of hysteria gone as if it had never existed. SHe pulled out the gloves, tossing a pair to Taggart and one to Raleigh, then pulling them on herself. Nobody moved, and her voice lashed out again. "Hold his other arm, goddamn it, you worthless bitches."

Logan dropped down and grabbed his arm, pulling it straight out, his hands slipping on the blood that had run down the other man's arm. Nancy's gloved hand picked up his dogtags and glanced at them.

"Anyone O-Positive, start eating MRE's and drinking water. You're about to have some fucking use." Nancy snapped.

"I'm O-positive." I said.

"Shut up, Ant. I'm busy." She snapped, digging out a scalpel. "You're going to be doing something else. I need someone to sit on his hips, hold him down." She began slicing away the uniform. "Hendicks, stay with me, babe."

Hendricks screamed again, and Kebble staggered up, her eyes glazed and unfocused, and she sat down on Hendricks, grabbing his belt to keep her balance. She retched once, turning her face away, but didn't throw up.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Raleigh asked, her voice tight and thin.

"Yes." Nancy answered.

I couldn't see what was going on, but the sounds were horrible. Hendicks screamed as Nancy went to work. Taggart turned green, doing what Nancy told her. Kebble kept swaying back and forth, mumbling to herself. Raleigh vomited once, and Bomber just gritted his teeth and held tight. Logan gagged a few times, but never let up.

Nancy would toss little splinters of yellows bone to the side, snap at Raleigh to pour more water into the wound, and ordered Taggart to move the small battery powered suction tube around, snapping at her more than once that she couldn't see.

The doors shook when something outside beat on them. Screams and sobs sounded from outside or floated through the vents. The crashing of boots came from upstairs. But the lights never flickered, and the temperature did nothing but climb. Nelson came over to wipe Nagles' face off, hold a water bottle for her to drink out of, and to shine a flashlight where Nagle ordered.

Oakes was O-Pos, and when Nagle ordered her to lay on the cot and told Raleigh to run a line from Oakes to Hendricks, Oakes refused. Marks' surprised me by grabbing Oakes and wrestling her over to the coat, holding her in choke hold.

"Hendricks is my friend. Lay down on that cot, bitch, or I'll knock your ass out and tie you to it." He snarled, throwing her onto the cot. He leaned down into her face, snarling. "I'll squeeze your ass like a wet rag if I have to."

Oakes shrank back from Marks, who came over next to me. I was sweating from holding Hendricks legs. The guy was strong, and Nagle working on him without anesthetic or mercy lent agony fueled strength to his struggles to get loose from us, from who was torturing him. He'd stopped screaming, lapsing into sobs and to pleas not to hurt him any more.

"Stay with me honey, stay with me, babe." Nagle kept repeating in between snapping orders for this tool, spray water, do suction, or yelling at us to hold him tighter.

"Give me his leg, Stillwater." Marks said, and I groaned when I let go of his leg, my right shoulder nothing more than white agony. My head was pounding, my headache making me sick, and my shoulder ground with each of Hendricks struggles.

"Stillwater, get your ass up here, boy." She snarled. I looked at Marks, who nodded, and I let go Hendricks' legs as Nancy pulled back and slapped Hendricks hard. "Stay with me, goddamn it. Open your goddamn eyes, you little pussy."

I moved up next to Nancy, looking down into the wound. I couldn't pull my eyes away from her hands. I couldn't even figure out what she was doing, her hands busy with a thread and needle and weird instruments poking out of the tissue.

"Stillwater. Ant!" She got my attention. "I need you to go up to the platoon area, go to the NCO office, and break open the Platoon Sergeant's locker." I nodded. "Get me my other aid bag." She looked down at the injury. "Hurry, but don't end up giving me another patient."

I looked around real quick, noting that only Clifton and Jefferson weren't directly involved in what was going on. "I need you two to come with me. Two man rule." I grabbed a brown T-shirt and a BDU top out of my rucksack and pulled them on.

"I can't, I'm O-Pos." Jefferson said. I grabbed my field jacket, my black gloves, and my cold weather cap.

"Same here." Clifton added.

"Jefferson, go with him, you were bleeding pretty bad earlier." Nancy said, not looking up. "Taggart, honey, I need you to give me some more suction next to the scalpel."

Jefferson paled, but grabbed his field jacket, gloves, and cold weather hat. He pulled them on and then followed me. I grabbed an M-16 off the table and tossed it to him, then grabbed another one for myself.

"Ant, please hurry." Nancy said.

"Come on, man." I told him, racking a round in the chamber and walking toward the doors. "One of us has to get back and give Nancy her bag." I put my hand on the door, but it was merely cold.

"Ready?" I asked Jefferson. He shook his head and I grinned. "Open the door, I'll cover you."

His hand shook as he reached out and grabbed the handle. Behind us, Hendricks screamed again and Hendricks paled, but he still pulled open the door.

Beyond the door the CQ Area was only dimly lit by a few of the ceiling lights behind the CQ counter. Icicles, some almost a foot long, hung from the ceiling, the ice hazy and brownish from whatever the liquid had touched before it had frozen. Ice coated the double doors and the walls, the trophies behind the glass only vague shapes behind the glaze of ice. Our breath plumed out in front of us, an almost tangible razor line of cold in front us preventing the rising heat of the Game Room from penetrating the room. The snow was flat, blameless, almost unmarked, a pure white blanket that coated everything in the room. Almost.

Spatters of blackened fluid marked the snow from where Bomber's shots had punched through the LT's body. Or what was using his body. And two boot prints showed in front of the doors where the LT had stood.

"Where is he?" Jefferson asked as we moved into the room, the snow crunching under our boots.

"Gone." I answered, pulling the doors shut, muffling the sounds of Hendricks screams, Taggart's soft sobs, and Nancy's crisp commands.

The snow crunched under our boots as we walked over to the stairwell door. It was coated in ice, almost an inch thick, the handle buried under a mass of ice the size of a football. When I slammed the butt of the weapon against the ice, all it did was make a dull thump and chip a small chunk of the ice.

"Shit." I said, stepping back and looking at the other set of double doors. "We'll have to go through Titty Territory."

Jefferson nodded, trying to watch everywhere at once.

The doors to Titty Territory were covered in ice, and shoving at the doors just made a crackling noise.

"Now what?" Jefferson asked. "The doors are covered."

I leaned back and slammed my boot against the middle of the door seam, and the doors burst open, ice flying around us and stinging my face. The doors bounced off the walls and I moved through them, keeping my weapon up and ready. The emergency lights were on, and I was sick of red light. Who's bright idea had it been to bathe everything in blood when the shit hit the fan? Yeah, yeah, optical purple and all that shit, saving our night vision, but after a few days of living under the red lights, I was tired of the gastly look to everything.

The wall where I'd fought with the LT was spattered in blood, chunks knocked out of the wall where the axe had missed me.

"What's going on?" Jefferson asked.

"We're in trouble." I answered, bending down and running my fingers over the snow. The blood had frozen, creating sharp chunks, and I broke off a chunk, rubbing it between my gloved fingers till it melted, then smelling it. It smelled like blood, fresh blood, not like the clotted shit that marred the snow behind us.

"Did you really kill the LT?"

"Didn't have a choice. He tried to kill Taggart and Nancy." I stood back up. "Let's go."

I had to kick open the doors at the middle of the hallway so we could leave Titty Territory, ice shattering and falling to the snow covered floor. Above us a shriek cut loose and bootsteps thudded away from us, heading toward the other end of the building. Jefferson cursed and raised his weapon at the ceiling, but I grabbed it with my free hand and pulled it down.

"Don't waste your ammo. It's just the building playing games." I told him.

"Who's doing it?" He asked as I looked at the handle to the stairwell door. Once again it was covered in ice, which spread out from the door to cover it in at least an inch of hard ice.

"I don't know. Tandy, dead Nazi's, something." I told him, trying to break the ice with the butt of my weapon. Three hits and I gave up. "My personal belief?"

"Yeah?"

"This mountain hates us and wants us to die." I told him, turning away from the door and heading down the hallway. Like the rest of the hallways, icicles hung from the ceiling, the walls and doors coated in ice, and snow at least three inches deep on the tile that a week before had been polished to gleaming.

Jefferson didn't scoff, just moved closer to me as we moved down the hallway.

"Was it this bad last winter?" He asked at about the halfway point. The building was almost a block long, normally it didn't seem that long, but in the ice and snow and cold it seemed like forever.

"Yes and no." I told him, shivering. "Last year we had a psycho hunting us with an axe. Killed about a dozen people, almost killed Bomber, almost killed Nagle, damn near killed me." I held up my left fist, stopping him.

At the end of the hallway the window had broken, spilling snow into the hallway. Snow was packed in, the door to the stairwell almost covered by it and the door outside completely covered.

"Shit. Now what?" He asked me as we turned around.

"We do this the hard way." I told him. I closed my eyes, running over the plan I'd come up with. It was risky, really risky, but it was Hendricks' only chance.

We were silent for awhile, until he broke the silence after I kicked the refrozen doors to Titty Territory back open.

"How many of you were left alive?" He asked.

"Six of us." I told him honestly.

"Oh man." He said. "That counting you, Bomber, or Nagle?"

"Yup." I answered.

"Shit." I knew what he was thinking. Bomber, Nagle, and I would all have each other's backs. There's no way any of the three of us would leave the others behind. I'd come pounding to the rescue more than once. Bomber had proven it time and time again. Nagle had proven her loyalty in blood.

"Tony, I love you!" shouted down a cold stairway echoed in my mind.

The three of us would do what we could to protect everyone, but if it came down to it, a choice between one of the others or Nancy and/or Bomber, well the others were shit out luck.

Except Taggart.

I knew Bomber, knew how his Texas mind worked, and I knew Nancy Nagle inside and out, just like they knew me. Bomber wouldn't let a pregnant woman die if there was an ounce of life left in him, Nancy was looking for redemption, and me? Well, I was just a boy.

We'd die, the three of us, before we'd let whatever it was that lived in the barracks to take her.

He was wondering which of the others would survive, if there'd be more or less than last time. I wasn't thinking that far, focused on just how I'd get Nancy's bag from the Platoon Office. That SF Surgical bag she'd begged, borrowed, stolen, or blown someone to get.

I kicked open Titty Territory and moved into the CQ Area, noting how it looked like another inch of snow had fallen in the room. The lights behind the CQ Counter dimmed then came back on, and the emergency on strobed a few times. Above us boots crashed to the floor in response to some shouted command.

"Jesus." Jefferson breathed.

"Has left the building." I added, pressing the ice covered doors to the Day Room. They flexed, and I knew I'd be able to kick them open. "Knock on the door, get some snowshoes." I told him.

"I don't know how to use them." I turned to look at him. "I missed out on that training."

"Just get a single set them." I told him, turning and facing the double doors. They were covered in white, and I wondered how far the snow was piled up out there on that side of the building.

He knocked, answered Clifton's shouted question, and went into the Game Room. I heard Hendricks scream again, and Nancy yell at them to hold him, that she'd gotten a lot of the bleeding stopped. He came back with the snowshoes, the doors mercifully muffling Hendricks' cries for mercy, begging Nancy to stop hurting him, calling out for his mother.

"You're not going to..." Jefferson asked, but I just ignored it, leaning back and kicking open the doors. The keyhole was filled with ice, almost mocking me, so there was no chance of unlocking it.

The doors crashed open, revealing snow covered chairs. The windows were dark, and my flashlight beam reflected back at me, which made me smile. I stepped in, knowing that the blackness on the windows meant that the snow hadn't covered them. I could hear Jefferson breathing as he followed me in. Against the far wall the projection TV burst to life, was showing static, the speakers howling.

Jefferson cut loose with a burst from the M16, shredding the projector and making the screen shake. The lights died with a shower of sparks, and feedback screamed through the room for a second before it cut out.

"Sorry." He said in the darkness.

"Just take it easy." I told him, stopping at the windows. The glaze of ice was thin, less than an 1/8th of an inch, and it cracked and fell away when I turned the handle to the middle position and pulled the window open.

Wind whipped around me, snatching my breath away, howling into the room and sending loose snow flying. Jefferson cursed, but handed me the snowshoes when I held my hand out.

"You can't go out there!" he shouted. I ignored him and put my foot into the snowshoe binding, quickly lacing it up.

"Two man rule!" He yelled in my ear.

"My rules, my decision." I yelled back. "When I go out this window, go back to the Game Room, do not stay here by yourself." I put on the other snowshoe and straightened up.

"You're crazy!" He yelled as I dug a braided length of 550 cord out of my pocket. One of the Rangers had taught me the braid, a way to pack over 500 feet of cord into a thick braid only about eight inches long, or like mine, almost a 1,000 feet in a double thick ten inch long braid. The good thing about it was you could tie it off and feed out the 550 cord without it all suddenly coming loose. The loops would snap through, the braid would steadily shorten. Tension on the D-ring I'd woven into the end of the braid wouldn't pull it out, making it about as close to a spool as I could carry around.

I tied off the green cord to handle of the window, snapped a D-ring on it, then snapped the D-ring at the other end to my belt loop. I turned to Jefferson, nodded, then carefully put one foot outside, tapping for a moment, then swung out my other leg so I was sitting on the window. Wind howled around me, snow and ice crystals biting my exposed face, as I stared into the darkness.

"Shut the window but don't lock it." I told Jefferson, holding my weapon out to him. He took it and I pushed off from the window.

I only dropped about eight inches, relief flooding me. To be honest, I'd expected a twenty foot fall to the cement below, expected my legs to snap like twigs, to leave me bleeding out from compound fractures, shivering, in the darkness as I died.

Jefferson shut the window, and I put one hand out to touch it, wondering if the sudden thump of my open hand had startled him. I looked up to see stars, clear twinkling star, with clouds surrounding me. I turned and looked down the sight of the mountain and saw a sight that made my stomach plummet in disappointment. Beyond me the mountain normally dropped away into forest, with the ski resort five hundred vertical feet below us. Now, maybe two hundred feet below us, I could see the tops of the clouds, spread out like a rumpled plain of gray. The clouds hazed away as the clouds surrounding the building and me thickened up enough to block my vision. It made me look like I was in the middle of a round gray cup.

I knew I only had a few minutes to get around the building before hypothermia began to set in. I should have gotten my cold weather gear, should have put on long johns, but I knew that Nancy or Bomber would have protested, and that Bomber would have tried to go with me, Nancy would have tried to stop me.

The Army was all about acceptable casualties, and while the goal of any commander was to minimize casualties, when it came down to it, people died to accomplish objectives. You sent one across the road to check for ambushes. Men pulled point to get the enemy to fire earlier and trigger the ambush. Someone had to charge the machinegun with a pistol, attack the tank with a grenade, or rush the bunker with a knife. Someone had to go outside to get the SF aid bag.

That's what boys were for.

...willing to die...

...but never will...