Room 275
Building #1, Second Floor (Barracks)
Task Force 38 Intelligence Area
Secure Area
Alfenwehr, Germany
1900 Hours
24 October, 2004
"Get eyes on that," Sawyer snapped. Vandemire and Hernandez both moved to the window as I swung my legs off the beg.
"Get me up, Aine," I snapped. She took my hand and heaved me to my feet as the other two soldiers rushed to the window. She pulled one of my arms over her shoulder and helped me to the wall locker, "What do you want?" She asked me, pulling it open. My heart was hammering, my foot pounded, and I was starting to get a headache.
"Can't see," Vandemire said. Another burst sounded out. Tight, six shots maybe, someone was using good fire discipline.
"There, all the way over on the left," Hernandez said, tapping the window.
"Corporal, my old BDU's," I told her. I was wheezing from the effort, the infection flaring up the problems with my lungs.
"Got lights, all three towers," Vandemire said, "I'll watch the right."
"On the left," Hernandez said. There was another tight burst. "Same guy, looks like he's firing down into the fog."
Colonel Sawyer moved up next to me while Aine helped me dress. "Thought you were going to rest your foot,"
"Things changed. Someone's firing, that ups the ante," I said, batting Aine's hands away so I could button my BDU pants myself. There was a twinge behind between my eyes.
"You're my advisor, so advise," The Colonel said.
"These guys are at max stress," I told him, "We've got about sixty seconds before this causes an incident," I tucked in my shirt and threaded my belt.
"More fire, this time from the ground," Hernandez said.
I checked the lizard and he showed me that thirty rounds had been fired. There was a lot of static on his monitors and he was trying to clear it up.
"He's out," I said, pulling on the winter BDU top and starting to button it.
A long burst. The lizard reported, based on dopplering, that one weapon picked up after the other, turning two short bursts into on long burst. I reached up and pinched between my eyes, the headache blooming.
"What the fuck?" Hernandez asked.
"Two firers, one from the tower, one from the ground?" I asked.
"How did you know?" Hernandez asked.
Another burst. Another twinge behind my eyes bad enough that my stomach rolled.
"On the right, far tower, firing level," Vandemire said.
"There it is," i said, grabbing my field jacket. It had a liner, heavy and down filled, and I had a bad feeling I'd need it. I pulled it on, leaving it open, and grabbed my trigger mittens as well as my leather gloves with the wool liners. Aine reached out and steadied me as my headache bloomed harder, spots appearing in my vision and my balance wobbled.
"You all right?" Aine asked me.
"Firing left," Hernandez said at the same time.
The sounds of the weaponsfire sounded out, the flat pops echoing weirdly in the fog.
...STAND AND DELIVER...
"Yeah," I answered. I could hear the yelling, in the back of my head.
...Aine screaming like a banshee as she was impaled on a Russian bayonet, her athema stabbing repeatedly as she kept coming at the Soviet trooper...
"Firing right," Vandemire said at the same time as I spoke.
...'I'm fucked, ain't I?' he asked, his guts oozing out of his belly, 'I jumped on the grenade.'...
...yeah, yer fucked, brother...
"They're gonna cut apart the guy in the middle if he doesn't jump," Sawyer said.
"That's the goal. Easily written down as friendly fire, more stress, pretty soon everyone will be at each other's throats," I clipped my Gerber to my back. I wasn't feeling any pain from my foot, the Percocet and the beer doing their work. My hands were shaking and my stomach was rolling, my head pounding.
...Get up, get up, get up and fight! Fight or die, Actual, FINISH THE FIGHT!...
I could hear my own voice roaring, so many different places, so many different teams. I looked in the mirror, trying to steady who and where and when I was. The reflection was still a big guy, heavy with muscle from hard work and pumping iron, but was obvious I was getting old. I wasn't the young street machine I had been twenty years before, made of twisted steel and sex appeal. Gray at my pounding temples and spotting my reddish blond hair. The scars were upraised and my face looked beaten and battered. While I watched a drop of blood rolled out from under my eyepatch. I could see the drop in my repaired shoulder, a good three inch drop, making my shoulders look lopsided no matter how much physical therapy I did or how much iron I pumped. I stared at myself, trying to fix where, when, and who I was.
...flamethrower, fuck yeah...
"You will do just fine, Aodan," Aine stood up on her tiptoes to whisper in my ear. "Hold tight to who you are, and you will do just fine."
...I'm hurt bad, brother, I think I'm dying, ruptured inside of me...
"Light on at the base of the middle tower, moving toward the middle building, but visibility is dropping," Vandemire said. "Looks like the door on the side is open."
When I turned away from the mirror I could taste blood and sweet peach candy in the back of my throat.
"Count the blinks," Colonel Sawyer said. He took down on of my shadow boxes, "This thing any good?"
It was one of my shadowboxes with an M1911A1 in it, along with a magazine and eight bullets. That one had the 10th Mountain coin in it. The same pistol I had gotten from working with the 10th during that shitstorm in Africa.
...how much further, Ant? I'm almost out of gas here...
...push through, Actual, we make the rally point or we die here...
"Use it, but it's fake, the mountain made it," I warned him, pinching the bridge of my nose again..
"You OK?" He asked. I nodded, and he continued, "I think the weapons will work," The Colonel said, opening the back of the shadowbox.
"Why do you say that?" I asked, watching as Aine put on my boots and laced them up type.
"It wants us to have weapons, wants us to spill blood, right?" He said, "Then the weapons are going to work, and work just fine."
...YOU FUCKING TRAITORS!...
The voice was so loud I flinched slightly, half expecting him to come bursting through the door with that bloody axe. I was worried someone would say something but nobody was looking me.
"Six blinks, doors still open, flashlights moving in the fog," Vandemire said.
"Don't trust him, Ant, he wants to kill you," Donaldson whispered in my ear.
"Small arm's fire has stopped," Hernandez said, "Lots of flashlights up there."
Taggart appeared behind Hernandez, rubbing her back, "Don't listen, Ant, it's happening again. Stay strong, don't listen."
"Watch the ones below," Aine said, her attention off of me. "And watch the door. Something is going to happen."
...vile nasty dirty boy should have drowned you at birth...
"Like what?" Colonel Sawyer asked. I stomped my boots, wincing slightly at the flare of pain.
The taste of peaches and axle grease grew stronger.
"What you saw in the old tunnels. Alfenwehr is an old dark place," She said.
The jingling of metal caught my attention and I looked behind me. King was leaning against the door, the M-60 LMG in his massive fist. He was cut and battered,his brow cut from where his helmet had taken the brunt of several AK-47 bullets. He shook his head, turned, and walked through the window as Aine spoke.
"And old dark places attract old dark things," we both finished. My stomach knotted again.
"Was that a blink?" Vandemire asked. I blinked, slow, and almost fell over.
"I think it was," Hernandez replied. "Big blink, I thought it was the door shutting."
Half the lizard's monitors went down and my body got a flushed and tingling feel through it.
"He's in there with Bunker 421," I said. Frowning I reached into my equipment locker and toward the back. I'd picked it up during Just Cause, used on in Kilo-29 and Kilo-61. There someone that had ended up a very good friend had needed cover while he ran a flamethrower and I'd used the machete to cover him.
"The guy with the axe," The Colonel said, no question in his voice. "He gets in there with them, and it'll be all over."
...Anthony, I love you...
"I thought you said they didn't have any ammunition," I said, leaving the machete where it was and walking into the room, the room pitching around me as my balance went out. Colonel Sawyer had the pistol taken apart and the CLP out of my desk so he could get the weapon lubricated properly and ready for use.
I put my hand on the back of the chair to balance myself. He looked up at me, his hands still assembling the pistol, "Carmichael said they didn't, that he didn't even authorize weapons, that he considered this a Green Zone."
...request for gunship support denied, there is no reports of enemy action or forces in your area...
"Someone handed out armor and weapons," Hernandez said, "Because that was a shitload of firepower."
...we need all this firepower, it's better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it...
"The mountain produces the most with the least effort," Aine said. She turned and looked at the door, where she had painted an intricate design with her paints. "That is how forces like it work the best."
...something's out there, something angry, it's getting closer...
"Stillwater," The Colonel turned around, the .45 in his hand.
"Don't trust him, Ant, he's Special Forces, and you know that they run with the CIA now," Nancy whispered in my ears.
"Don't listen, Ant, it's just hallucinations," Taggart said softly, her warm hands on my back.
I blinked again, slow, so slow, like it didn't want to open again. "Yes, sir?" I looked down at him, and a drop of blood landed on my hand on the back of his chair. My headache flared again, almost driving me to my knees, but I held tight to the chair, grabbing it with my other hand.
"Aodan?" Aine asked, turning around, "Aodan, are you..."
"I know you don't like Special Forces," the Colonel started, but I interrupted him with a snarl.
"I just don't have thermite for them. They talk all kinds of shit, but don't hold water when the carbohydrate sulfide hits the meat," I snapped back. The Colonel looked up at me in confusion and three spots of blood dropped on his face. "Spot bin Laden? Oh, some Army tire-iron enlisted can't kill him, we gotta get SEAL Team Six or who the fuck ever in six days later after thermometers walked off with a fucking marching band firing flares in the air from a hooker's ass. Army clandestine site under towncar by hostile forces? Oh, we can stand around holding spendthrift dicks all day because it's probably just training and we're too drunk framework stupid to even find the fucking helicopters. What's that, a Class Alpha biological outbreak mechanic immediate backup? Har dee fucking har har, we'll get there eventually registering it's just influenza and everyone knows the flu can't kill you..."
"Aodan," Aine stepped toward me, her hand reaching for me.
"THAT'S NOT MY FUCKING NAME, AINE McCULLEN, AND YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME HERE!" I shouted at her, spinning around.
The lizard's boards were showing massive malfunctions across everything. Respiration, pulse, alpha waves, muscle tremors, adrenals, everything was out of whack.
"I SURVIVED HERE EIGHT FUCKING YEARS AND ALMOST EVERY ONE OF THESE SNAKE RADIATING BLAST WAVE FUCKUPS ARE GOING TO DIE IN THE NEXT SEVENTY TWO TWO TWO HOURS!" I yelled, turning around to face the Colonel. "SO YOU SNATCH ME UP AND NOW ALLIGATORS AND STREPTOCOCCUS ARE EVERYWHERE AND YOU CAN'T EVEN ENGAGEMENT!"
I could taste pork grease, peaches, and my sister's perfume on my tongue, smell home-made ginger ale, peach cobbler, and the color blue.
"Stillwater?" Hernandez asked, turning from the window.
The Colonel stood up and I stepped forward, slapping the pistol out of the Colonel's hand, "Every fucking time you stupid bastards sheep into trouble you run screaming to me and my ratchets until I can pull your tritium out of the goddamn Stalangrad," I said, my voice low and deadly. I took a step forward, my left knee buckling.
I looked up at him, "You poisoned me, you strontium son of a strasse," I wiped my nose, blood all over the back of my hand, "I'll... I'll..."
The lines went completely down as I pitched over backwards with a strangled cry, my back arching and my feet kicking out.
"Seizure," Vandemire cried out as Aine caught me, folding her legs so my head was in her lap.
"Jesus Christ, did anyone else see that?" Hernandez asked, her voice a mixture of horror and awe.
"No," Vandemire said, his voice flat and emotionless. "I saw nothing."
"I saw her change clothing," Hernandez choked.
"Put it from your mind, Isolda," Aine said, stroking my forehead, not trying to hold me still, just cradling my head so I didn't hurt myself. "You merely saw me as I am."
Then everything shattered. I was convulsing so I was trying to rock onto my right side, both arms pulled up and my leg muscles shaking. My left leg kicked out several times.
SYSTEM SHUTDOWN
SYSTEM RESET
Location Unknown
Time/Date Stamp Error
Operator CRC Failure
My muscles hurt, all of them, and my head was pounding. I opened my eyes, groaning, and tried to lift my arms and found them strapped down.
"How you feeling, Sergeant?" A voice I didn't recognize ask. He came into a view. A guy in his 30's with a caduceus on his scrubs and Major rank.
"Where am I?" I croaked.
"Task Force 38 Dispensary," He said. "They moved you here after a seizure, you were confused and violent," He lifted up a folder, "You're goddamn lucky your medical records were here and we found your medication in the locker."
"Medication?" I asked stupidly.
"Yeah. Colonel Sawyer said you lost your medication on the flight over here," He patted my shoulder, "You can't go cold turkey off of medication like that, Sergeant."
"Yeah, I should have thought, I've just been caught up in stuff," I told him. I rattled the restraints. "Let me go?"
That made him laugh, "No, you have to be psychologically stable for at last two hours before I let you up. Last time you passed the tests and then came up and tried to kill my two nurses." He pointed and I looked down at my foot, which was bare with stitches in it. My boot was on my other foot. "That was a serious wound and a slight infection. We gave you IV antibiotics for it and I'll prescribe painkillers as well as give you your standard medication."
He shook his head, "Those pills are something I haven't seen in anything beyond old training manuals," He held up a foil container.
Sticky Bromide.
"How long have I been down, total?" I asked him.
"It's zero-two-thirty," He told me.
Great. Around seven hours.
"We CAT scanned you. You are receiving regular medical care, correct?" His face looked worried.
I was tempted not to let him off the hook. I knew about the bad spots in my CAT, the damage to my lungs he would have seen, and all the embedded metal.
"I was seen at the VA three months ago, and receive private care," I said. I looked him the eyes, "I'm terminal."
He nodded. "I'm very sorry," He said.
"Yeah, well..." I trailed off. He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable.
"You have a visitor," He told me to break the awkward silence. He swept aside the curtain where Aine was standing in her gingham dress, holding her hands clasped at her waist and looking demure and harmless. He turned to her, "Sit with him, I'll be back to check on him in half an hour or so."
"Yes, Doctor," She said, her voice soft. She waited until he left, then came in and sat next to me on a chair, crossing her legs and smoothing her dress.
"How bad am I, Aine?"
She looked around, "You're all right, Stillwater, the infection wasn't too bad. You just needed your medications," She said gently, nodding toward the curtain.
"All right. Thank you," I said. She nodded, flashing me a quick smile, then went back to detached.
We made smalltalk, most of what came out of her mouth was lies. She called me Stillwater, or Sergeant Stillwater, never anything else. We both watched the clock. The doctor showed up thirty five minutes later, and hour after that, and then a half hour.
"There's a Colonel Sawyer here, he said he's your CO," The doctor said, smiling. He began undoing my restraints, "He signed you out."
"Thank God," I answered, sitting up. I stretched, my muscles still bruised feeling. Seizures were tough on a body. I hadn't had one in awhile, not since the new medication.
The Colonel came in while I was pulling my boot on, after Aine had passed me my Gerber. He nodded to me, staying stiff and formal.
"We need to get back, Sergeant," He told me. "How do you feel?"
"On line, on time, sir," I told him.
Something felt off, badly off, and Aine had given me sly hand signals several times that we needed to be careful, that others were listening, and that we were not safe.
"Use your crutches, Sergeant Stillwater, your foot is not yet healed, and age has worn away your pain tolerance," Aine said, holding the crutches out to me.
I put them under my shoulders and followed Aine and the Colonel out into the hallway. The Dispensary was three stories high, with a hardened sublevel and below that access to the War Fighter Tunnels. At least the elevator worked.
When we crutched toward the entrance I saw Vandemire and Hernandez waiting for us. Vandemire greeted me with a smile, reaching out to hug me, and Hernandez nodded coldly, turning around and walking away as soon as she saw me.
"She doesn't like you," Vandemire chuckled. Aine sniffed loudly and followed.
"Hate at first sight," I chuckled, crutching along behind them.
The doors opened to let us out into the fog. The Dispensary was only two hundred feet lower, and a mile around the mountain, from the barracks, but it made all the difference. I could feel the snowseeds in the wind and could taste the iron tang that meant the wind was coming from the top of the mountain. There were heavy iron deposits seeded through the mountain, another reason why commo gear was often spotty and supposedly why batteries felt and the mountain had the weird electric charge it did.
Lights flashed on a humvee and I crutched my way toward it. Aine steadied me over a patch of ice as I swung my injured foot. She squeezed lightly three times, letting me know we were still being watched. I got to the rear passenger door and squeezed into the seat.
The humvee was different than I was used to. It felt like more armor plating, as well as more armor on the back of the seats. More commo gear, more electronics, and the back of the vehicle only had a few rucksacks in the back.
The Colonel got in the front passenger seat, Aine sliding in on the other side and Vandemire following her. As soon as the door shut Hernandez fired up the vehicle, easing out backwards and turning around on the paved U for the ambulances. Once she pulled out on the main road she kept it slow, mostly idling the engine in low gear. After a little bit Hernandez pulled over, putting on the hazard lights and throwing it in park.
"We're clear," the Colonel said.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "OK, what's with all the cloak and dagger shit?"
"Two of the tower guards recognized who was attacking them," The Colonel said.
I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
"They said it was you."
I nodded, "BDU's, let me guess, they didn't get a good look at it, but it looked like knife wounds on one of them."
"Pretty much," The Colonel answer, "Thankfully, when they got their report, Hernandez and McCullen had already taken you to the hospital and confirmed you were suffering a siezure. Lt Col Carmichael doesn't think you did it."
"But the troops do," I finished.
"Yeah," Hernandez said. "There's a couple of guys got badly cut up, nothing major, but all have like five or six wounds that required stitches."
"And I've been strutting around in my BDU's, which Aine's been wearing chocolate chips," I said, shaking my head.
"Couple of the guys figure it's you. One of the guys you came in with said your file shows a record of close quarters combat with knives," Vandemire said. "They're pretty pissed off."
"So they think its some kind of training op, or that I'm a serial killer?" I said.
"They don't know, but from what I was hearing from some of the guys is that they think you went crazy," Vandemire said, "Being carried out of the barracks bleeding from your nose didn't help."
"So they think I attacked the guys at the motorpool, then came back, and what, had a seizure to amuse myself?" I asked. I lit a cigarette, coughed, and took a deeper drag.
"They think one of the guys at the motorpool got a piece of you," Hernandez said, "and it didn't help that you were out of your mind after the seizure."
I nodded at that, rolling down the window slightly to flick my ashes out of.
"So how do we solve this problem?" The Colonel asked.
"Aodan's just needs to smile more," Aine said softly, rubbing my knee.
"What?" I asked.
The Colonel laughed, turning around in his seat and baring his teeth in something that could only charitably called a smile.
"Smile," He said.
My steel teeth. Duh.
"They said they got a look at that creepy ass smile," Vandemire said.
"Like that bitch we fought," Henandez said, "Goddamn, that still burns my ass that it was a copy of me. There's only one of me, goddamn it."
"There can be only one," I said in my best shitty Scottish accent.
That got chuckles.
"You'll be called in by Carmichael along with the rest of us, let me do the talking," The Colonel said. He shook his head, "For the love of God, keep your opinions about SOCOM to yourself."
I shook my head, "I don't know what came over me," I admitted.
Vandemire laughed, "You're powered by hate, man, don't pretend some of us didn't see you in the tunnels fighting those things. You gave two shits about escaping them, you were in it to win it, baby. You were having yourself a goddamn good time."
"I'm not that bad," I grumbled, flicking my cigarette out the window and into the snowbank.
"Do not tell such falsehoods in my presence, Aodan," Aine said sweetly, "I was there, at your side, during many times when the blood began to flow and the screaming started," She extended her arm into the front seat so that the scar on her arm was visible to everyone. "I sustained this and many other injuries following Aodan into the clash of steel," She shivered, her nipples erect under her dress, "And many times over I would follow him."
"Dude, I watched you fight an undead thing that was wearing my face," Hernandez said, slowing down as the fog thickened, "Stark naked and perfectly willing to keep fighting after it punched a hole in your foot."
"You should have been in the tunnels," The Colonel said, "He yells at us to run and stays fighting like twenty dead Nazis with a goddamn short sword, bellowing that motto on the mosaic in the CQ Area."
Vandemire laughed, "Seriously, 'Finish the Fight', and 'You Got Nothing' are your go-to for your war-cry?"
"We howled Finish the Fight many times over the years," Aine said, "Out numbered, out gunned, and Ant here will roar it out and do his best to kill everything he can injure." She punched the roof, "Finish the Fight!"
I grinned at her, feeling everything swarm back.
...twisted steel and sex appeal, all the ladies love a killer...
The Colonel laughed and punched the roof of the humvee, "Finish the fight!" he yelled.
"Finish the fight!" Vandemire yelled.
The barracks came into sight.
"FINISH THE FIGHT!" we all roared together, slamming our fists against the ceiling.