Site Bravo-Three-Ten (Military Command & Control Section)
Blackbriar Ridge Training Facility
Secure Military Area (Decommissioned)
North Dakota
United States of America
19 Feb, 2002
0730 Hours
I staggered over to the side of the RV, grabbed a hold on the front, and threw up between my boots. The last of the meds, the MRE I'd eaten before we'd headed into the Rapid Entry Point, and plenty of stomach acid hit the concrete and splattered.
"Easy, Stillwater, easy. It's just me," The LT rubbed my lower back as I started dry heaving. "It's a post-combat adrenaline drop, you'll be OK."
"Christ, he got 'em all," One of the privates said.
I felt the RV rock under my hand and the female private spoke. "Do not go in there. It's pretty bad."
I heaved again, feeling my sinuses burn as the acid I was heaving up burned them. The LT kept rubbing my back as I heaved and gagged again. The lizard watched the monitors, noticing that the my adrenaline levels were starting to stabilize out and my dopamine production was starting to normalize as my system evened out.
"How the hell did he break the rifle?" One the privates, I think he was the one who said he was a Specialist, asked.
"Close combat," Kincaid said. "Once he got in there with them it was all over but the crying."
I straightened up and the LT stopped rubbing my back.
"Are you injured?" She asked me as I undid my canteen cover. My mouth tasted both dry and slimy at the same time.
I shook my head, "No, Ma'am," I told her. I unscrewed the canteen cap and took a long drink off the lemon flavored water. I poured natural lemon concentrate in my water all the time, just for situations like this. The lemon cut through the nasty taste in my mouth.
"Lot of blood on you, are you sure?" She asked.
Heather chuckled, "None of it's his. They went against the Atlas Ant, they didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell against him."
"That bad?" The LT asked.
Kincaid laughed. "He's still partially medicated, Ma'am, just wait until he's back to fighting shape."
"I'm right here," I grumbled, putting the canteen back.
Heather moved up and took my wrists, smiling up at me. "They missed what happened, Ant."
I leaned against the front of the RV and dug in my pocket for my pack of cigarettes. Heather waited while I lit one and the LT set the privates to gather up the weapons and toss them into the RV as well as dragging the bodies over next to the vehicle. Once I'd had a couple of drags she took my wrists again and squeezed them gently.
"How many were in the RV?" she asked.
"Four in white, one in yellow, two in blue," I told her.
"Do any interrogation?" She asked me. I shook my head and she made a disapproving moue. "We could have used that intel."
"They're mute," I told her. "They can barely scream. They told me all I needed to know when I moved on them."
The LT moved over to me, keeping a slight distance between us, making sure she was close to Heather.
"What kind of intel do we have, um..."
"Corporal," I told her, tapping the rank on my collar. She just nodded.
"It's a psychological thing," Heather tried to explain, then dropped it.
"They have no combat experience, they panic easy, but they're got time in simulations and practical exercise. It's obviously some kind of caste system. Yellow for heavy weapons, white for standard troops, blue and green I don't know yet but I think one's technical and the other some kind of officer control. If I had to guess, I'd put the green as control," I told her.
"Why?" She asked, watching me take another drag off the cigarette. One of the privates who had been moving the bodies into the RV climbed out, staggered over, put his hand on the side of a Bradley, and threw up.
"The blue ones inside the RV had toolkits on a shoulder strap, the green one kept trying to back away," I told her. "He was pointing at me and looking at the white ones right up until the time I shot him off the bayonet."
She nodded at that. "Recommendation?"
I slapped the side of the RV. "We blow this fucker in place, then head back to everyone else," I told her. "I don't like being separated from the rest of the group like this. I want to know what's going on out there. Plus I need to talk to Donaldson."
She turned to the E-5, "Sergeant Harris, gather up the men, wait by the egress door for the rest of us. We're going to blow the vehicle and meet up with you."
He didn't look happy about, but he did move over to the gaggle of soldiers who were grouped up. Several of them were very pale, and the one who'd been vomiting moved back to the group.
"I'm not going to ask where these guys came from or who they work for, I have a feeling you don't know," The LT said. I just nodded as she continued, "And no, I'm not going to make an issue that it was pretty much a slaughter. They're obviously the enemy, and right now that's all we know."
I just nodded and moved toward the back of the RV. It had two propane tanks on the back and I started dicking with the carriage that held them onto the back.
"My only question is, do you think these unknown persons represent a threat to the United States of America and it's citizens?" She asked me as I lifted up the propane tank.
"Yes," I told her. "I don't think we're going to be believed by the chain of command, and I think this is the tip of something ugly." I opened the propane tank so that the gas hissed out.
"Like what?" She asked me as I threw the propane tank into the RV. I stop, bent down, and picked up my broken M-16A1. The butt was broken and hanging down on the strap.
"These guys came from somewhere, and they drove here in this RV, which meant they're based somewhere here in CONUS. Plus, they know where the hard-sites are and are searching them for something," I told her, waving at her to follow. Heather had moved off with the group and Kincaid was walking back from further in to the motorpool. "They wanted data out of the Applied Advanced Research Projects Area, and we interrupted them."
She nodded as I stopped and turned around, then pointed at her M-16. "May I?" She nodded and handed it to me. While I kept talking I pushed the buttons open to separate the upper and lower receivers on her weapon.
"They knew this place was here, but I don't think they new the extent of the facility. They also didn't have the passwords and correct credentials, so they made some kind of mistake and the Advanced Projects section blew up on them," I attached her lower receiver to my upper receiver then started working on the carrying strap. "Blackbriar Ridge is pretty well compartmentalized. The listed facility is only an Alpha class facility, supposedly a temporary facility for fifty people for a week, while the real facility is listed under Copperhead Ridge Facility." I handed her back the broken weapon and cracked open the M-203 on my upper receiver. "The P-3 facility is actually listed under a Fort Dietrich facility, and is a pretty impressive bioweapon facility mostly concerned with offensive capability."
She shook her head, "This is all so weird. I mean, secret facilities, bioweapons, creepy guys in plastic outfits that look like clones."
I laughed as I pulled one of the 40mm HE grenades off my bandoleer. "This ain't nothing. Me and Kincaid and Major Donaldson, back when he was a private, got sealed up in a bunker when it went into lockdown mode. We got trapped with literally thousands of mutated cannibals."
"Jesus," She said softly. It was abut a hundred meters to the RV.
"Yeah, there ain't no comin' back from where you're going," I raised up the M-203 and aimed at the RV. "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" I pulled the trigger and the 40mm made a bloop sound and kicked against my shoulder. A half-second later the 40mm hit where I was aiming, shattering the window before exploding inside. The propane that had been filling up the interior of the RV caught with it and the whole thing shattered. It started burning as I turned away and started walking back toward the door.
"It's gonna get weird," I warned her as we walked toward the main exit door. Heather and Kincaid were standing next to the controls and Heather waved at me. My hands automatically reloaded the M-203 without me looking at it, my fingers searching out a red star cluster flare. "This whole thing gives me the heebie jeebies."
"Why so?" The LT asked.
"Back in 96 I had a crew that were tasked with drawing these down, slating them decommissioning, destruction, or refit. We'd followed data we'd pulled out of an Echo Class bunker to a bunker out in West Virginia. There wasn't much more than hints, but Kincaid and I had a feeling. Donaldson was just out of OCS, and he backed us up," I told her. Behind us the fire was burning merrily as the old 70's RV burned to the ground.
"What was in it?" She asked.
"Well, we found it, but it had been gone through, and recently. The mainframe and the servers were completely wiped of data, restored from deep storage backups, but I managed to recover some of the inventory records," I told her. "Someone had beaten us to a facility that wasn't listed on records, selectively removed a large section of the inventory, mostly computerized lathes and machining tools as well as seeds, frozen ovum, stuff like that. Echo Class bunkers were mostly concerned with repopulating cattle and other farm animals."
"Who knew about the bunker?" The LT picked right up on where we were going.
"The dumbass Colonel we'd reported it to had entered it into the computer system, which means that a large pool could have accessed the records," I told her.
"But you believed that it was someone in the chain of command," she said as we walked up to Kincaid and Heather.
"Yeah," I told her.
"Yeah, what?" Kincaid asked. He sipped at the water tube for a second then made a face, "Ugh, I'm on recycled water."
"She figured out that part of our reasons for running this off the books is that someone up the chain of command may not be working for who they say they are," I told him.
Heather made a face, "Ugh."
"Throw the power," I told her. She nodded and threw the heavy bar, the green telltales lighting up over the bar. The bright blue spark made my eye water.
"So this is all off the books?" The LT asked as we walked over to the metal grill set into the concrete floor. She kept following as we walked over to the control box.
"Yup," Kincaid said. "The Major is pretty much running this solo, only a few people in the know."
I picked up the control box and smacked the side of it a couple of times till the telltales lit up. They were all green, and I checked the around real quick. All the gaggle was on the grill.
"Stand in the middle of the grill, and I'd advise you to sit down," Heather bellowed out as I turned the massive selector lever to charge.
Somewhere below us massive piston began to thump and water vapor billowed up at the edges of the grill as the system purged the system so it could be pressurized safely. The three privates standing up shouted and sat right down.
There was a low shudder that rattled my bone marrow as something kicked in below us and I heard a chain rattle and I knew that the chain, that looked more like a bicycle chain than a swing chain, was having tension put on it for a test.
"WARNING! EGRESS PORT OPENING! STAND CLEAR! EGRESS PORT OPENING!" the woman's voice was loud as thunder, able to be heard even over the system getting ready.
The massive door at the edge of the grate started to raise up. Thirty feet high, fifty feet wide, and once the blunt reseating wedge cleared the slot I could see it was at least three feet wide, the blunt leading edge of the wedge was a foot thick. Metal plates retracted, revealing rotating red lights that painted everything in flashing crimson.
"STAND CLEAR OF EDGES! WARNING! STAND CLEAR OF EDGES!" The woman ordered. I glanced again and saw the everyone but Kincaid and me were sitting down.
The door fully retracted and at the edges of the metal grill a net-like fence popped up. The grate shuddered again and slowly started raising. I could hear the chain clanking and the scream of unlubricated metal for a moment before it stopped shuddered and began raising smoothly. The tunnel was concrete and after about ten feet there were two slots on all four walls and steel shutters pulled back to reveal bright white lights behind plexiglass alternating between rotating red emergency lights.
The grate took up the whole slanted tunnel as it lifted up into it at a 30 degree angle, keeping us flat. I moved toward another massive door that acted as a roof. Someone screamed, obviously thinking that the grate was going to crush us, but the platform stopped a good twenty feet from that second door. There was clacking noises and I looked over to see the massive gear system set into the slots in the walls engage, then the piston system that had lifted the grate up to this point disengaged and withdrew back down. Once it had pulled back far enough the system began closing the lower door.
"WARNING! DECONTAMINATION WILL ENGAGE IN FIVE..."
"HOLD YOUR BREATH!" I bellowed out.
"FOUR!" There was a crash as the bottom door closed, sealing us into a twenty foot high room.
"THREE!" Steel shutters pulled back, revealing sodium lights behind plexiglass that lit up the entire grill. I could feel the UV and IR hitting my face from lights hidden behind the bright white sodium lights.
"TWO!" Squinting my eye I could see the shutters pulled back and the water nozzles poke out. They were dribbling clear water and I knew that the system had already flushed the air and any rusty or dirty water from the system.
"DECONTAMINATION IN PROGRESS!" She bellowed in the voice of an angry god.
Some of the people cried out as the water sprayed over us. Warm water, and I saw Kincaid slowly turn in a circle with his arms held up at shoulder height, straight out. Heather did the same thing, instinct kicking in. I did the same, washing off any contaminates on my uniform. I could see bloody water running off of me as the medium pressure sprayers washed my uniform.
The water cut out and there was a thumping. The nozzles withdrew and the steel shutters snapped closed. I noticed it took three tries for one of the plates to close.
There was another shuddering groan and the upper blast door started retracting over our heads. As it drew back the slots on the sides that were exposed at it moved were three feet wide and edged with rubber to create a seal. Lights cracked on and I could see that we had another hundred feet to go.
The gears and chains in the walls and beneath the grill engaged and the grate started moving upwards. It shuddered even though it was nominally smooth as it rose up. The shuddering was more from the lack of weight on the grill than any malfunction. There were only a few humans on it rather than heavy machinery, so the weight wasn't there to keep the grate in place.
I looked down and saw my hands were washed clean, the blood for tearing my way through the clean suited guys.
The grate only moved abut a foot every five seconds, and it took nearly ten minutes for it to reach the next door. There was more thumping and the system used massive pistons to slide another door closed beneath us.
"EXTERIOR DECONTAMINATION TO BEGIN IN FIVE..." the woman bellowed.
"HOLD YOUR BREATH ON TWO!" I shouted out.
The woman counted down, and the system repeated the same decontamination process it had used below. This time there wasn't any discoloration that ran off my uniform this time, and I made sure to point my rebuilt weapon down at the floor so the barrel wouldn't fill with water out of subconscious reflex. I saw Kincaid and Heather do the same. Kincaid's was more sensitive. Water was bad news in that ejector, and the last thing he wanted was an explosion of steam off of it when he triggered it.
Finally the upper blast door retracted and I saw the steel colors of the dawning sun and the low dark gray clouds overhead. The air smelled good. Cold, wet, but good as the grill rose up to the concrete floor that was all that was left of a building. When it locked in I looked around.
The concrete had been poured over the blast door but someone had used a jackhammer and an air compressor to bust up the concrete and there was a small tractor still on a trailer that had been used to shove the concrete off to the side.
"Let's move out," The LT shouted, "Get off the grill."
I could tell that the privates, the Specialist, and the NCO was showing severe fatigue in the way they walked off the grill. I waited till everyone was off, flipped the lever all the way to the left to 'Descend' and then pressed the button.
Three steps took me off the grate, and I watched as the grate slowly lowered. It was loud in the morning stillness as it withdrew about twenty feet down and then the blast door slid into place. It boomed close and I turned and walked over to where everyone was gathered up.
"Ready for me to signal for pickup, Ma'am?" I asked the LT.
She nodded, stretching and yawning.
I moved a handful of steps away, raised up the M-203, and pulled the forward trigger. It went bloop and a second later the red star flare burst into life in the sky. Once that was done I moved over and dug a red smoke out of my pocket. I pulled the pin and tossed it to the side and then walked back to the LT and the rest of the group.
I didn't mention that I'd seen black smoke rising up from the direction of the elementary school.
"...is highly classified. You will not describe or speak about what you saw, any conclusions you have drawn, to anyone not fully authorized and cleared to broach that subject to," Heather was saying as I came up. "The existence of these bunkers is rated Top Secret, and the exact location, layout, and mission of the bunker complexes are rated Top Secret-SSBI."
"Think they'll so up?" One of the privates asked me.
"Donaldson knows the drill," I told him, digging out my smokes and lighting one. Heather took it from me and I sighed theatrically and lit myself one.
"Can't wait to get out of the suit. The recycled water tastes like ass," Kincaid complained.
"Tastes like filtered piss, you mean," I said, taking a deep drag and blowing out the smoke in long exhalation to mock him.
"Blow me," He said, then rolled his shoulders. "Man, this was a total bust."
The private patted the bag on her hip. "Not entirely. We should be able to figure out what they were after," She smiled.
"Once that stuff dries," I said. "Last thing I wanna do is plug it in and have it blow out."
We stood silent, shivering in our wet uniforms, for almost ten minutes before I spotted the Gypsy Wagon leading the pack of sedans.
There was a private standing in the Gypsy Wagon's ring-mount where an M-60 was hooked up. The private had on a Kevlar helmet, a Kevlar vest, and there was live rounds locked and loaded into the LMG. There was only three sedans.
The vehicles stopped and Donaldson got out. He was packing one of the M-16's and had a serious expression on his face.
"You get what you needed, Sergeant?" He asked.
I nodded, shifting my grip on the M-16.
"We need to evac. There's enemy forces in the area. We got aggressed." He told me.
"Casualties?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Three wounded, all ambulatory. There was only six of them, their weapons malfunctioned in the middle of the fight, but they opened up with blowing up one of the sedans even though it was empty."
"Any get away?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, although the Colonel objected to me walking through and executing them, tried to quote the Rules of Land Warfare at me."
I glanced back, the LT was telling everyone to find space in the convoy and reminded them not to talk about what they had seen or done.
"We need to get somewhere. My guys are wiped out, and we need a good night's sleep and time to go through the data I pulled out," I told him.
"There's a motel about sixty miles outside the valley," He reminded me. I nodded while I field stripped my cigarette butt, staring at him. "We'll pull back there, let you guys get some rest, and we'll figure out what to do next."
I yawned and stretched. Heather and Kincaid had moved around to the back of the Gypsy Wagon. Heather was digging in Kincaid's rucksack while he took the tanks off his back so he could strip out of the armored J-Suit.
"Sounds good. We're gonna need to read in the Lieutenant and Private Paige into the mission for sure. They've both got their heads on straight and are pretty sharp," I told him. He just nodded as I moved over to pull my ruck off my back. Kincaid was opening up the J-Suit, steam and the smell of BO pouring out of the suit. I dropped my ruck into the back and accepted the uniform Heather handed me.
"I can do that, but first we need to get somewhere where you guys can get some rest, some food, and then we can debrief on what went down," Donaldson said. He sighed, rubbed his face, "I'm exhausted. The Colonel kept trying to let the men wander around. If I'd let him, those guys in the white clean suits would have butchered us," He waved at the guy in the ring mount as I stripped naked. "As soon as he opened up on the M-60 they started to scatter. One of them had his weapon detonate in his hand, and we killed the rest."
"Glad I handed out weapons," I said, pulling on the boxers. Just being dry made them feel warm.
"Speaking of which," Donaldson said, "How much stuff did you steal, old man?"
"Didn't steal it. Tried to give it back, nobody wanted to deal with the headache, so I just depot'd the equipment in a field expedient manner to prevent loss," I told him, pulling on the T-shirt. That cut down the wind, and, like the boxers, just being dry made it warm.
That made Donaldson laugh. "I forgot, you old Cold War guys can legally justify just about anything."
He moved over to talk to the Colonel, who was trying to stop the LT from putting the privates in the sedans according to some method she had thought up. They started talking, too low for me to hear, while I finished dressing.
Private Paige came up and set down the bag on the tailgate of the Gypsy Wagon, then set down the server. I nodded to her and pulled the shoulder harness off of the server and reattached it to my LBE.
"That wasn't as exciting as it could have been," Heather said, coming back. "I checked the wounded. We've got a twisted ankle, two pieces of shrapnel from the exploding car that I'll remove later, and a broken nose from diving to the ground and his helmet slipping forward and slamming his face."
"Dumbass," I said, setting the LBE correctly.
"The LT said I'm supposed to ride with you, if that's possible," Private Paige said.
"Mount up," I said, moving around the vehicle. Donaldson and the LT were heading for us as Kincaid, Heather, and Private Paige slid into the back seat. It beat the old GMC trucks, there was more room in the back. The guy standing in the ring-mount made it a little crowded, but not as bad as with the old trucks.
"The LT is going to ride with us," Donaldson said. He glanced in the back and shook his head. "It's gonna be close quarters only, Lieutenant." He looked at me. "You sit in the passenger seat, I'll drive. You're wiped out."
I nodded, walking around to the passenger side. I opened the door and slid into the seat, buckling my seatbelt. The heaters were filling the cab with hot air and I held my hands in front of one of the vents to warm up my hands. The ache in my hands, from old breaks, implants, and dislocated knuckles, started to recede.
Donaldson slid into the driver's seat, slamming the door shut before buckling up, and turned to me. "Get some rest. We're going to take the long way out of the valley to avoid the roads and the underground facility," He told me. He lit a cigarette and threw it in drive.
"It'll take a few hours, so get some rest," He told me.
"Yes, sir," I answered. I tugged on the bill of my softcap, pulling it down over my eyes, and slumped down in my seat. I heard the ring-mount hatch slide shut.
"Sorry, Ma'am, there isn't much room," The private said.
"It's OK, you can sit on Momma's lap," Heather said.
The rocking motion of the vehicle lulled me to sleep before we left the valley.