Atlas Reloaded - Book Five of the Damned of the 2/19th

Another Easy Atlas Morning

"Sixty-three," he told me. He checked where he'd written on the back of his hand. "Load up the old Red-Eye missiles, we're getting hot shit new Stingers. You?"

"Thirty-four. Eight inch APERS FASCAM from about sixty or sixty-five," I told him. "Got around two hundred thousand in that bunker, lot of rust on them but nothing unstable."

"Jesus. I keep forgetting just how much old rusty and unstable shit is out here," He said. He sighed. "Think the lazy fucks have sent us anyone to work with us?"

I shrugged. "Who fucking knows. You get breakfast?" I asked.

"Brown bag, just like you," Red said, referring to MRE's. "Tuna and noodles for breakfast for me."

"Chicken and rice," I answered. I nudged it in gear and idled out of the forklift shed. Once Red came out I got out, closed the door, then came back and climbed back in my fork.

Red pointed at two people in uniforms heading toward us from the camo-net covered area. "Here come our ground guides."

I nodded.

Turned out to be No-Chin and his wife. Chubbo moved over and jumped on the engine cover, sitting next to me, and shifted her legs to give me access to the fork controls.

"Morning, Franky," she said.

"Morning, Helga," I grinned.

"I am proud to represent the Soviet Union in the Olympics for the shotput," she said, putting on a shitty East German accent, then laughed. "I deserve that."

"See you later, Ant," Red yelled, then threw the forklift in gear and stomped on the gas. The diesel engine roared and the front wheels started rolling.

He didn't spray gravel and I could see the digusted look on his face.

"What's on the agenda today?" she asked me.

"Eight inch FASCAM," I told her. I put it in gear and pulled out, letting the forklift ease up to about fifteen miles an hour. "Got one-five-five HE in front of them that we gotta clear out a work space first. Gonna be a little risky, pull two wide and three deep with each pull," I told her.

She whistled. That meant I'd only have a single fork under the middle of each row of three pallets, using gravity to hold them together. Instead of taking a left when I reached the road I took a right, heading toward the overhead cover sections.

"Where we going?" She asked.

"Getting pallet of artillery pallet replacements," I told her. "Some of those pallets in the bunkers have a couple decades of dry-rot going on."

She nodded.

"How high are they stacked in the bunker?" she asked me.

"They're the big thirty inch tall ones, thirty-four counting the pallets, so they're stacked ten high in the bunker," I told her. She whistled again. "If I'm remembering right, it's two sets of fifteen per side, runs about fifty to sixty rows deep."

I saw her running the math, then she just gave up, shaking her head. "That's a lot of goddamn FASCAM."

"Bunker's only half full. Only have eight hours of fire by 8th Infantry for the FASCAM missions," I told her. "When we're done reloading this place I'll have five bunkers of that to help support the first seventy-two hours of fighting."

"Damn, that's some serious fucking metal," She said. She took my cigarette and took a drag off it. When I pulled in under Dinosaur Row and headed toward the pallet I'd loaded with artillery pallet parts she looked at me. "You get breakfast?"