Dog Days of Summer (Damned of the 2/19th Book Four) - Finished

The More Things Change...

FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
6 August, 1986
1845 Hours

I'd forgotten to hook up the catheter and my bladder felt like it was going to explode with enough force to fill my J-suit with Grade-A US Army NCO jelly. I had hoped it would only take a few hours to get the job done, but there were manufacturer defects and just plain old age complicating things. That was without the complications of being elbow deep in something made by the lowest bidder and complicated as a nuclear weapon.

I was removing the cores on nuclear weapons, packaging them for shipment so they could be refurbished, and replacing them. Not nice clean ICBMs like civilians always thought of when they thought of nuclear weapons, but rather ugly, dirty weapons that polite people didn't need to know about, much less speak of.

Two hundred of them was my allotment, my thirteen man squad taking the rest of the three thousand 235-kiloton weapons. I'd planned on getting through twenty or so, but cage linings, bad timers, corroded struts, had slowed me down to the point that I had only managed to finish nine, the last one was my tenth. Sweat was pouring off of me, and my water had run out two weapons ago, leaving me licking dry lips while rubbing my forehead against the sweat soaked foam pad on the inner lining on the J-suit's helmet. All that did was run sweat into my eyes as the pressure squeezed out that foam, but it was long ingrained habit.

There was a clunking sound behind me and I turned as best as I could, moving my whole torso so the suit would let me see. Specialist John Bomber, my best friend and assistant squad leader, moved into my field of vision, clad in his own J-suit and looking just as hot and sweaty as I was.

"Where's your weapon, Ant?" He asked me, looking around. "Chief Henley wants a full accountability of all weapons by serial number, including the grease guns."

I turned from John  back to what I had been doing, trying to ignore a complaining muscle in my back. "Both of them are behind me, with my ruck and the detection gear." I told him.

"Thanks. You know Henley." he said slowly. If I'd been paying attention better I'd have noticed his odd tone, or how quickly he moved over to lay his hands on my weapons. "You shouldn't have left your LBE in here, it could get contaminated."

I snorted inside the helmet. "The cores are just fine, shieldingwise, they just have too many micro-fractures to be trustworthy."

"I'll take it outside anyway." He told me. I glanced over, both hands still inside the weapon. He was walking toward the entrance of the massive bunker, carrying both the M-3 grease gun and my XM-16E1 in his hands, along with the combined package of my LBE, my Kevlar vest, and my rucksack.

"All right." I answered, not really paying attention to what he was telling me about and concentrating on moving the mechanical timer just a little further so I could slide it out, which would let me pull the shielding out of the way.

"Hey, Ant?" John had come back into the bunker. I'd managed to slide the shielding aside to access the core, but the damn thing was stuck. At this rate I was going to piss radiation for a week.

"What, John, I'm kinda busy." I told him. I twisted slightly, trying to rock the core loose. Stupid things pressure welded to the damn frame all the time. Nothing major, just enough to be a pain in the ass. Even with the radiation shielding built into my gloves my fingers had started to get that weird tingling feeling, almost as if they were sun burnt, about three weapons ago and now it felt like there were little insects moving under the skin.

I was telling myself it was all in my head. My safety badge still read in the low yellow, so I was good.

"Chief Henley needs you uprange. He says it's urgent." John told me.