Nuremberg Army Hospital
Western Germany
Late Winter - 1987
January 11th

I was laughing with Bomber, lifting up a stein of beer, Nancy cuddled up next to me and sucking on my ear where my earlobe used to be, alternating between ticking me with her tongue and biting me. Her hand was under my shirt, in my open zipper, and was gently caressing me. Around us people moved, singing like we were, and on the stage the German band played.

My watch started beeping, and I set down my beer stein and hit the button.

It kept beeping.

Glaring at it, I tried again.

It kept beeping.

Bomber started laughing, sputtering into his beer, as I started slamming the face of my watch against the edge of the table.

It kept beeping.

I pulled off my watch, and dropped it in my beer.

It kept beeping.

Nancy stopped sucking on my ear, Bomber set down his beer stein, all three of us cocked our heads and looked at the 1 liter mug the beeping was coming from...

The beeping woke me up. It was annoying, and wouldn't stop.

When I opened my eyes, I remembered where I was, where I'd woken up only a few hours before. They'd transferred me to a new room after unhooking me from the respirator, the catheter, and everything else. They wouldn't tell me my injuries, just telling me to rest, that rest was what I needed. I'd gone to sleep when the nurse had turned my light off and left me in the dark.

The drugs flowing into me from my IV had done their work, dragging me down within minutes. But I was awake again, and I remembered where I was and how fucked up I was.

The room was in Nuremberg Army Medical Center, I was laying there with both legs and both arms in casts, staples in my stomach and shoulder. My left eye didn't work, apparently it had stayed open due to blood loss, hypothermia, and a concussion, and the cold had done the rest. The eye itself looked fine, the pupil moved, but it no longer fired into my brain.

"You awake, boy?" The voice was rough, gravelly, and sounded like Sam Elliot after a night of whiskey and stripper bars.

"Father." I said, rolling my head to look at him.

He was sitting in his Class-A's, his rank on his upper arm sleeves, hashmarks climbing on both arms toward his elbows. A rack of medals that you'd need a howitzer to penetrate.

His life in bits of metal and cloth.

Lines and scars on his face made him look old to me, but his green eyes, just like mine, were just as penetrating as I remembered. He smiled, and he suddenly looked younger.

"I'm here, boy." He told me, pushing himself to his feet. I'd forgotten how tall he was. Taller than me, taller than William, and even old he was built like a linebacker.

"Father." I choked out.

"Son." He said, putting his hand on my forehead.

I started crying.

"Let it out, boy, there is no shame for a real man to cry." He told me, putting his other hand on my chest. He stood there, letting me be a child again, letting me be his son, letting everything be all right now that he was there.

I tried to speak, and it came out as a croak. He picked up a brown pitcher with a lid and a straw, moving it so I could sip out of it. I drank greedily, and he pulled it away.

"Easy, boy." He told me.

"Nancy. Bomber." I croaked.

"Alive." He told me. I started crying again in relief. He didn't shush me, didn't tell me to stop crying, just smoothed my hair back and kept his hand on my chest, telling me that there was no shame, to let it all out.

"How..." I croaked, and he gave me more juice. "How bad?"

"You're friend, Nancy Nagle, she woke up a few hours ago. Your friend, John Bomber, he woke up about an hour ago. They're moving them both down here." he told me. "I insisted that they move them down here, so the three of you can be together."

It didn't surprise me that the Old Man had that information or that kind of power. He'd been in the Army since before most of the people in the hospital had probably been born.

"How bad?" I repeated.

"Not good." He rubbed my hair, his face grim. "She saved you, boy." His voice got softer. "She saved my boy."

"Father, please." I said, and he jerked, his eyes moving from whatever he was looking at to my face.

He sighed, and looked old again. "It's not good." The first honest answer I'd gotten. "The three of you were hypothermic, four of you had suffered a lot of blood loss, had shrapnel and bullet wounds. The guy with the axe wound is out of ICU and recovering."

He waited a moment.

"Taggart?"

"She's fine. She was released, and placed under arrest pending an investigation." He smiled again. "That's why I wasn't here when you first woke up. I got her released and to her debriefing when I arrived from Bragg, then I came straight here."

Of course he would see to her. She'd been there, stood with us, and survived. My Father believed in loyalty. I felt nothing but satisfaction that he'd done what he did. I'd have done the same, and I was glad he had seen to her and not left her in a cell somewhere.

"Her baby?" I croaked.

"Fine." he told me. I knew it was the truth. My Father never lied.

I started crying again, and fell asleep to my Father stroking my forehead.

EPILOGUE TWO

Nuremberg Army Hospital
Western Germany
Late Winter - 1990
January 21st

The door opened, and the four us stopped speaking. Bomber and Nagle were in the same position I was, laying upright in the hospital bed. John's face had been put back together with staples, Nancy's nose was bandaged from where the Army had given her a nose job to repair it after the frostbite. Taggart was sitting in a chain, her legs in braces and a fresh scar on her forehead, the hair having barely grown back from where it had been shaved away so they could put twenty two stitches into her head.

My Father stood there for a moment, waving someone away, and then walked into the room. Despite his age he was still unbent, and his BDU's were bare, no rank, no patches, no jump wings, no name, no nothing, just US ARMY over his heart. His gray hair was in a flat top, and he looked the model of exactly what he was. The grizzled Sergeant Major come to visit his wounded troops.

He pulled our beds so we all faced the middle of the room, waved Taggart to a chair, and then pulled one out so it was in the middle of the room. He sat down, pulled his notebook out of his pocket, flipped it open, then took out a pen before he looked up.

The silence was thick. Despite his kindness, he intimidated all of us.

"No bullshit, soldiers." He broke the silence. "Nothing you tell me will be put in the hands of JAG, but I want to hear what happened. There's more to it than what you all told JAG and CID."

Nancy, John, and Cathrine all looked at me, and I pretended not to see my Father's smile at the loyalty as I nodded.

We told him, the full, uncensored version of what had happened. The way the LT had gone power mad, gone crazy if he ever was sane. How Bomber, Nagle, and I had been tied to chairs and beaten in an attempt to extract a confession that we were Soviet agents. The fact that the Rear-D had become divided up into factions. How it had ended in an orgy of retributive bloodshed and murder.

We even told him about Tandy, how the LT had come back, how the guy from the year before had come back, how people had just vanished.

How we'd killed one another in the snow, the cold, and the dark.

Through the whole thing, he just sat there, nodding, making notes, asking for a few clarifications, but just accepting everything we told him.

When the story was over, he snapped the notebook shut and leaned back.

"JAG is not going to be pressing charges against you." He said. We all breathed sighs of relief, and he nodded, looking serious. "The doctors say that you three are safe to be released from the hospital, so when we're done here, I'll be signing you out on my own authority, and we'll be going back Stateside."

"Where will we be going, sir?" Taggart asked, her voice small.

"I'm not an officer, soldier, I work for a living." My Father told her, smiling. "You'll be going back to Bragg with me, and then you can go wherever you want."

He stood up while all of us looked at one another, unable to believe our luck. He began walking toward the door, but stopped when Taggart asked a question that hadn't even crossed my mind. After all, he was my Father, his reach was unlimited, and if he wanted something to happen, it did.

"Why did JAG drop the charges?" She asked.

His shoulders hunched, and one fist clenched, his knuckles popping in the silence. Without turning around, he spoke.

"JAG sent four MP's and two CID, as well as a crime scene team in through that tunnel you soldiers came out of." He opened his hand, then closed it again, his knuckles crunching again. "I told them to take a Ranger squad, and insisted on being there when they went in, even though they turned down a team of my own men."

"What happened, Father?" I asked. I didn't want to know, but I had to.

He was silent for a long time. One of the ceiling lights flickered.

"One of the last things we heard was screaming." He said, and took two steps toward the door, reaching out and grabbing the handle. He paused, one hand on the handle, the other clenching again, the pops loud in the silence.

"The last thing we heard was the sounds of something eating." He told us. "I refused to send in my boys, and despite my advice, the OIC sent in a five man Ranger team he had pulled from a nearby unit." He was barely visible, the room lights dim.

The temperature seemed to drop in the room, and my shoulder suddenly throbbed.

"We waited twelve hours. None of them came back." He said into the dimness, and opened the door. The room seemed to brighten. "None of them will come back if there is a God." He said before he stepped out the door. He turned to face us.

"One of my men will bring you PT uniforms. Get dressed." His face was expressionless. "We're leaving for Bragg as soon as you're all dressed."

"Captain Stevens, have the nurses get them dressed, call Frankfurt and tell them we'll be there in a few hours while the nurses take them downstairs to my car." My Father told someone outside the room. "I want these soldiers Stateside now that JAG is done with them."

"Roger that." Someone said. They came in the room, carrying four folded PT uniforms. He was in BDU's, a 75th Ranger tab on both shoulders, airborne, air assault, and combat infantry badges on his chest. He had Captain on his collar, and his nametag read "STEVENS", he looked every inch one of my Father's men.

"The Old Man wants you ready." He stopped and looked over all four of us. We just stared back at him. The nurses came in behind him and stopped.

"Well?" He asked. A voice of command and authority, used to being obeyed.

"Leave the PT's, get the fuck out, and take them with you." I snarled. He jerked as if I had slapped him and he turned beet red. I swung my legs off the bed, letting my casts hit the floor.

"The Old Man said..." He started.

"I know what my Father wants." I told him, looking at him. Bomber had followed suit and Nagle was getting help from Taggart. "Did all those years eating snakes damage your fucking hearing? GET OUT!"

"Leave the PT's." Nagle added.

He flushed and turned around, waving the nurses off.

He left the PT's, and Taggart limped over to get them before coming back.

Taggart helped us dress, and blushed when Nancy kissed her on the cheek.

I knew that the Captain was running to my Father to tell on me. His minions had been doing that since the day my oldest sibling was born. Later my Father might lecture me about proper military courtesy, but that would be all, and I knew he'd secretly be pleased at the way we stuck together and done what needed to be done on our own.

"Where are we going to go when he lets us go?" Taggart asked as her and Nagle helped me into a wheelchair.

"We could go to John's parents." Nagle suggested.

"No." He said.

"What about Nancy's?" She asked.

"No." Nancy answered.

"Stillwater?"

"Are you kidding?" I asked.

"How about my parents?" She asked.

"Where's that?" I asked, looking up at her.

"Nebraska." She told me.

"On a farm?" Bomber asked. She nodded.

"We'll be able to enjoy ourselves? Get drunk and laid without your parents getting mad?" Nagle asked. "Because the first thing I'm doing when they take these bandages off my hands is masturbate till I pass out."

"We can stay in the old bunkhouse, my father renovated it into a guest house when I was little." She answered, smiling at Nancy.

"Nebraska it is." I smiled.

"Corn is nice." Nagle said.

"I wouldn't mind milking a cow again." Bomber tossed in.

Bomber pulled open the door, and Taggart wheeled me out.

We might be put out over our injuries. We might be put out over what had happened. Despite my Father's assurances, we might go to jail.

But that was the future, and the future would take care of itself.

It always did.