2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
30 October, 1987
0330 Hours
The blood was hot on my fingertips as I brought them up where I could see them.
"Yup, he got a piece of you, Ant," Bomber told me.
"Got shot again, Ant," Westlin added, chuckling. "Welcome to the caliber club."
"Eat me," I told them both, undoing my LBE and tearing open the Kevlar vest. Two flattened bullets dropped from the Kevlar's nylon covering and onto the floor. I ignored them while Westlin moved up and knelt down to look at them.
"Forty-five rounds, Ant. You're lucky, they're slow. It's like throwing a rock at someone. If it had been the new 9mm rounds they would have done more damage," Westlin said. "Quarter inch layer of Kevlar probably wouldn't have stopped them."
"Whatever," I grunted, stripping off my BDU top and T-shirt. The hole in my shoulder was steadily leaking blood. The rhythmic steady pumping of a vein, not the squirting pulse of severed artery.
"Pretty bad," Bomber said, staring at my wound.
I sucked in air as I pushed my finger into the wound. Twisting it, probing at it, the pain white hot and making my vision gray out as I kept pushing it.
"Careful, Ant," Bomber told me.
"S'kay, I'm good," I told him, aware that my eyes were crossed from the pain. Felt like my finger was a sharp blade, ripping through skin and muscle.
...there. the bullet...
Now that I knew what it was, I was presented with my next problem. Take each problem one at a time, tackle each part as I could.
Every big thing was made up of a multitude of small things. Take care of every small thing, you eventually solve the big thing.
"Jesus, Ant, really?" Bomber asked me as I fumbled at my belt and pulled the Leatherman free.
Westlin stood up, staring me in the eye. "I'll help you, Ant, walk you through it," she told me softly. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek.
The lizard was trying controls, trying to get me to stop what I was doing, or maybe help, it was hard to tell, but none of his controls were working.
Just the monitors.
He wanted to close the wound, let the pressure buildup stop the bleeding, let it coagulate, let the joint heal itself.
The pain was going to be intense and I knew it. I'd be lucky if I didn't pass out.
I reached into my pocket, taking out the small medkit that Cromwell had taught us to carry on us, just in case. Then I pulled my knife free, set it on the generator, and finally pulled off my belt.
"All right, I'll stand here with you, Ant," John said, moving over and standing next to the generator. He tapped the Leatherman. "Gotta be careful with this, it ain't gonna be easy, brother."
I just nodded, lifting up the belt and putting it into my mouth. I'd need it to bite down on or I'd crack my teeth.
"This is gonna hurt, Ant," Westlin said. "Your fingers are going to be bloody, you'll have the shakes. Prep everything else now."
I nodded, flipping open the plastic container that normally held a sewing kit. I pulled out one of the curved suture needles, then the silk, and threaded it. My hand was starting to shake, and blood was running freely down my arm.
Once that was done I lifted the Leatherman, twisting it so it became a pair of pliers.
"You can't do a full repair job, Ant, and you need to be careful of the hardware that they put in there," Westlin told me. "Don't mistake one of those titanium pins for the bullet or you'll regret it."
I smiled at her around the belt, then looked down at the wound.
An inch into the meat, slightly to the right of the bullet hole. Slug was flattened, need to be careful pulling it out that I didn't catch the curled over edges on meat. It was going to hurt, and hurt bad, but I'd been hurt worse.
...nasty filthy disgusting vile boy, should have drowned you at birth...
I pushed the tip of the pliers into the wound and almost passed out from pain.
"You can do it, brother, just keep working. Concentrate on the job," John said.
"Almost there, twist a little, it's a bit to the right," Westlin told me, leaning forward till her nose was almost against the wound. I followed her instructions. "OK, a little deeper, then open up the pliers."
I just nodded. Sweat covered my body and my left knee was shaking, making me glad I was sitting down on the 5K generator.
"Open the pliers," She said. I did so. "Push a little deeper," she told me, and the pain grew more intense as the pliers widened in the wound. I pushed deeper, feeling everything. The way the teeth of the plier jaws tacked over the bullet. The way the bullet shifted slightly in the meat. The way the meat tore as the expanded jaws spread it open further. I could feel everything.
The skin divoted outward as I began pulling back to extract the bullet.
"The skin might split, but you've got good elasticity, Ant," Westlin said.
"Remember when that boxhead stabbed you, Ant? When he followed you into the bathroom and stuck his knife in your ass?" Bomber grinned. I grunted, staring at the wound.
Only an inch. I only had to pull it out an inch.
"Go slow. You yank it, you'll split everything open," Westlin told me.
I just groaned. Sweat was pouring down my face, dripping on the floor.
It was suddenly hot in the room.
In the corner of my vision the empty armored J-suit suddenly stood up.
"Injuries, both minor and severe, are to be expected during your performance of your duties," Staff Sergeant Blindon, USMC, barked from inside the suit. "This suit is your best line of defense during you exposure to the hazards you will face when the time comes to perform your mission."
The skin was deforming further, the plier jaws tight on the bullet, the skin bulging as I reached the halfway mark.
"Shift it slightly to the left," Westlin said.
"Remember how I was stitching up that stab wound in your ass, with you bent over the hood of that car with your pants down around your knees, when the cop showed up?" Bomber laughed.
"While you are in my care, while I am in charge of you, I will teach you to ignore pain, ignore thirst, ignore hunger. I will teach you that those sensations are nothing but weakness leaving the body," SSG Blindon stated, his cadenced voice clipped with the Marine accent.
"That cop thought we were having gay sex. You with your fist in your mouth to keep from making noise, your naked ass in the air, me standing behind you stitching you up," Bomber laughed. "I don't know which freaked him out more, the fact I was fixing you up, or the thought that he had assumed we were right out in the open engaged in ass fucking."
Westlin's breath was hot on my skin. "Twist slightly, it'll slide out easier," she told me.
I could see the end of the heavy .45 round now, clamped hard in the jaws of the pliers, slick with blood. The skin around the wound was white from pressure.
The pain was something else. Something delicious. A living thing that wound around me like a serpent made of fire and squeezed me until I could barely breathe.
"NURSE! GET CONTROL OF THE PATIENT!" A voice bellowed from behind me. One of the doctors from Darmstadt, from one of the surgeries that the Army had used to put me back together.
No screaming, just groaning and biting down on the belt.
The round popped free and blood poured out of the wound. Dark, vienious blood from a ruptured vein. Not bright from a damaged artery. Ants poured out of the wound with the blood, tiny ants, but growing larger. The blood was pushing them out, they were being torn free of where their jaws were locked onto my skin, where they had burrowed into the muscle of my shoulder joint.
"This is where half of you will give in to weakness and give up. Where half of you will be unable to rise above the rest of the herd and achieve greatness," SSG Blindon snapped from inside the armored J-suit. "Torn and strained muscles are nothing. Bent, fractured, and broken bones are just damaged machinery. Cuts, bruises, all of it is just a killing machine made of meat reporting damage to the systems. I will teach you to accept those warnings and carry on."
The bullet clattered when it fell from the jaws of the pliers to the cement floor, dancing and skipping for a moment as it shed drops of blood and the fire ants that covered it.
...I spit out blood and teeth, one of my incisors bouncing on the tile as it skipped and whirled out of the blood and danced across and bounced off the wall...
"Work quickly, Ant, you've lost almost a pint of blood," Westlin told me.
"It was, what, almost a week before you could sit comfortably, Ant?" Bomber asked, lighting a cigarette. "Damn, those stitches were sloppy. I hadn't had much practice back then, ya know?"
I picked up the suture needle and the surgical thread, and stared at the bullet wound. Blood was running steadily out of it, and I could see the tiny bodies of red Texas fire ants moving in the blood. Biting. Tearing. Stinging.
"You can't stitch up the vein, Ant, you'll just have to close the entry wound and call it good, but at least the bullet won't be impeding your movement," Westlin said. "Make the stitches small and tight."
I just nodded.
"You will wear those suits for the next one hundred seventy two hours. By the end you will be light headed and weak from hunger, the only water you will partake is through the suit systems, so while you will be hydrated you will feel as if you are suffering from dehydration, and any bowel movements you have will be sloshing around your feet," SSG Blindon said. "Now, move out!"
Three small stitches. Three. 3 in hexidecimal. 011 stitches in binary. Half a half dozen. One times three. A tiny hole. Carefully stitched with three stitches.
"Your drifting, Ant," Westlin warned.
"This is a live hazard area. Radiation from the 1950's surface and air tests," SSG Blindon stated, "Without these suits you will die within months, just like John Wayne did after defying the US military to film The Conqueror in the Utah desert," Blindon said.
"We been through a lot together, brother," Bomber told me as I snipped off the thread close to the knot. "I ain't gonna leave you, brother, yer my boy. We been watching each other's backs since Reception."
"Thanks," I gasped, sagging slightly.
"Deprivation is part of your training at this phase," SSG Blindon's voice was fading as the suit slowly crumpled back into a heap, "This training will... serve... you... well..."
"You've got painkillers in your kit, take two," Westlin told me. "You've got too much adrenline and shit in your system to go to sleep. You'll need full mobility."
"Drifting already," I told her. I dug in the pouch, my fingers leaving blood smears on the kit, pulling out the little ziplock envelope. My fingers were clumsy as I opened it up and pulled out a Percocet. I popped the blood smeared pill into my mouth, then sealed up the ziplock and put it away. My whole arm felt like an overstuffed sausage tube made of pain and rotting meat.
"You should take two," Westlin encouraged again.
I shook my head.
"He's gotta stay sharp," Bomber told her. She made a wry face, scrunching up her button nose, and stuck her tongue out at Bomber.
White medical tape and a gauze pad was tough to put together. I left blood smears on all of it as I made a quick patch to put over the oozing wound. I pressed it into place, groaning at the pressure on blood filled tissue and traumatized nerves, the way it stirred up the biting ants that had burrowed into my flesh. "Behave, you two," I said, slowly getting dressed. The blood had thickened, becoming sticky, on my T-shirt and my BDU top.
The bandage had stayed in place, and I was glad for it. My whole arm still hurt, my shoulder was hurting worse.
I went over and looked at the generators, seeing that they were ready to go, ready to be fired back up, ready to provide heat to the entire barracks.
Groaning, I pushed myself off of the generator I was sitting on, pausing long enough to light a cigarette, my fingers numb and clumsy. Three of them were purple, I couldn't feel my pinky or ring finger, just rippling nerve pain.
I took a swig of ice cold water out of my canteen, then took a drag off of my cigarette before moving over to the generators.
Heat the barracks. Heat the chlorine gas. Let it spread in the hallways, let it spread in the Orderly Room and in the secondary rooms. The heat would help with the gas, help it dissipate, help it debond back into components. Make the barracks livable again. Food stocks for a thousand people for the next two years. Get real food up, real water, real shelter.
Stop the...
"Drifting, brother," Bomber said. "Too late for that for Rear-D."
I realized I was standing still, staring at the massive throw-bar that would bring back power and heat to the barracks.
"I'm fine. I'm thinking of the preggos, the chapters, and Cromwell," I told him.
And threw the heavy switch.