Texas Nights - Book 13 of the Damned of the 2/19th

Hubris

Larkin Terminal
Robert Grey Army Airfield
West Fort Hood, Texas
CONUS
Sunday
03 November, 1991
1500

The terminal was silent as a church. Peel stumbled out of the bathroom, shaking, pale, wiping her mouth. Cots were laid out where the rest of Actual was laying down, covering their eyes. They were on the mend, most of them had kept down lunch, but their recovery was painful.

"Ma'am, a Captain Jane is here to see you," One of the Rangers said. He, like everyone else who wasn't part of Actual, was wearing a gas mask. "She's masked."

"Send her in," I said, watching as Peel sat on her cot, picked up her MRE, and started eating the dehydrated fruit cocktail by snapping pieces off, putting one in her mouth, and then taking a drink of water to swish in her mouth with the hard sweet food.

Captain Jane came clomping up next to me. I glanced at her and saw her wearing her gas mask, the hood pulled down, and her chemical gloves.

"Are they contagious?" She asked.

"No," I said. "But better safe than sorry."

She watched Peel suddenly bend forward and retch into her empty MRE container. "What's wrong with them?"

"I gave them standard Special Weapons inoculations," I told her.

"Is this an unusual reaction?" she asked as Peel rushed back to the bathroom, one hand on the side of her butt. "Seems a little strong for a few sticks."

I shook my head. "No. Not when you get nearly two hundred serums, vaccinations, and innoculations in a thirty minute time period and begin taking medication to prevent infection by some of the nastier biologicals out there."

My stomach gurgled and I pressed my hand against it. "That new anthrax inoculation though, Lugus stab the eyes of whoever developed it."

"I got a visitor just after lunch," she said after a moment.

I pointed at a woman leaning against the wall watching everyone with cold dead eyes. She had black hair in a pixie but, a narrow pale face, dark eyes that looked black, and was short. She wore a black suit with a ChemCorps pin on her left breast.

"Just like her," Jane said. "She looks exactly the same."

"Blackbriar clones them in vats," I half-joked.

She shuddered. "I'd believe it."

"What did she want?" I asked.

Captain Jane took my elbow and led me over next to the soda machine. Once we were there she looked around carefully before speaking.

"Discussing with me the duties 15th FSB will be undertaking if we get orders to unseal a packet she delivered. If the orders do not come to open them, we're to shred and then burn in a burn barrel the orders without opening," she said.

"Yup, that's Blackbriar Ridge. Burn before reading, shoot yourself afterwards, blind people only, no braille," I joked.

"I'm not the only one. Apparently the same woman, or someone who looks like her, delivered a sealed orders packet and the same instructions to the entire battalion," she said quietly.

That made me nod slowly.

Jesus, it was easy to have all this go to your head. On the word of a single 23 year old Warrant Officer an entire battalion was being prepared to roll out and provide support.

No wonder they spent so much time and effort watching our psychological status.

"How long do you..." Captain Jane said, but stopped when the woman in black touched her ear, cocking her head, obviously listening. Then she straightened up, looked around, and made an immediate bee-line for me.