Grafenwöhr
US Army Training Area
Training Site 22
2/19th Company Area
West Germany
30 October, 1987
0500 Hours
The tent flaps rustled as Private Chalkman pushed her way into the tent, another tube held in her hands. I could see the stickers on it from where I was standing on the other side of the table, my fists pressed against the surface. To my right was Chief Henley, staring at the map of the Group Area, sitting on the cot was Nagle.
"More scans, Chief, these are from USAREUR Headquarters," Chalkman said.
Henley looked up, his eyes red, dark circles around them. "Give 'em," he growled, holding out his hand. I noted that he was too tired, too stressed, to even insult her as she handed the tube over to him. "Now get your overly large ass out of here, you fucking Mid-west ape."
Chalkman just shrugged, did an about face, and got.
Chief Henley used his thumbnail to pop the seals. I saw one of them read "TS/SCI [BROOMSTICK]" on them. He popped open the container and shook the films out onto the table, the films unrolling and still smelling that odd smell of toner.
Nagle got up off of the cot and moved over to the table. Henley looked at her, sneered, and went back to unrolling the films. Nagle looked at me and I looked down at the scans.
To be honest, I was more than a little pissed off at her and her goddamn attitude lately. Her and "Jerry" both.
"Christ, look at that," Henley said, tapping where the motorpool had been. It was nothing but a smoke filled pit. He put the magnifying glass over it and we could see the ambient temperatures of it. Hundreds of degrees, consistent with burning fuel.
"You told him extreme prejudice," I said.
"I don't need any smart mouthed bullshit out of you, Texas," Henley snarled. "What the hell was he thinking?"
"Let me see that," I said, holding my hand out for the magnifying glass. "Something... odd..."
The scans were time-stamped at 0400 Hours, The fires were mostly burned out. Still, I took the magnifying glass and checked the Chow Hall.
Two holes in the roof, opening it to the elements.
Echoes of 1985.
Back to the motor pool. The building was gone, the snow around it melted by the intense heat. The conex was exposed, the nearer vehicles exposed. It looked like at least two of the vehicles had caught on fire and burned down.
The detail was amazing. Henley had mentioned that some of the sats were in Low Earth Orbit, new ones, high-definition cameras with lenses measured in feet ground to specifications that were impossible as little as five years ago. LASER etchings and smoothing. High precision.
I was finding myself agreeing with him that we were going to be obsolete soon.
Good, let fucking robots fight World War 3 while I drank beer on the ranch.
"What do you see, Texas?" Henley asked me as I looked closer at the scan.
"Bodies. Too many to be from Ant," I told him. "Plus, look, it looks, odd..."
He took the offered magnifying glass, bending forward and looking closer. "Chains. Too many for any normal purpose. They look like threads, but they're there. Lots of skeletons. Lots of bodies."
He looked up. "You were right, Texas," he said, his voice thick with something.
"What do you mean?" Nagle asked, frowning.
"Stillwater found a horror show at the motor pool," I told her.
"What?" She asked, frowning.
"The Rear-D troops were out of food. We've got chains hanging from the supports and too many bodies, what the fuck do you think he found, you slaw jawed half-witted bovine?" Henley growled at her. "What did you expect, for this year to be another walk in the park?"
Nalge glared at Henley, but he just scoffed and moved the magnifying glass to the Chow Hall.
"He took out the roof, but since we can faintly see bodies down there, I'd say he'd already killed the majority of them before destroying the roof to keep it from being used again," He said, running the magnifying glass across the surface. "No tracks, from the sheen I'd say it was ice and not snow. That means that the winds blew the snow pack down to the layer of ice."
I picked up the data sheet, looking over the weather estimates. Forty below before wind chill. Sustained winds of thirty miles and hour, gusts up to seventy. The storm had broken up an hour before the scans were taken, torn up by the winds. The high pressure system had moved west, over western Germany, leaving the low pressure system over Alfenwehr.
Killer weather.
"Aren't you going to do something now that daylight is fast approaching?" Nagle asked. "You've got a Ranger team standing by, why don't you send them through the War Fighter Tunnels?"
I wanted to slap her. Had Jerry fucked her brains out and left them on the goddamn mattress? Christ, if marriage made a person this weak, maybe I'd stay single till I was out of the military.
Henley turned and looked at her. "Because Cromwell has ten goddamn preggos and two worthless fucking chapters in the War Fighter Tunnels and slapped the goddamn immanent impact button on the fucking door. Nobody is getting into those tunnels without an override code, and the system isn't accepting any off-site codes."
"Why not?" Nagle asked.
Again, the urge to slap her. She knew all this shit. She'd been there, done that. Been in the tunnels with LT James and Ant and the rest of Echo-Five Actual. Hell, Ant had been part of the system refit team, had told us all about it.
"Because, unlike you, Cromwell's brain is used for more than figuring out whether or not what's being poked in her face is a dick to suck, and she knows her goddamn duty, you useless whore," Henley snapped.
"Cromwell won't open those tunnels unless she can be sure she's not going to put the rest of her crew in danger," I said slowly, flipping back the scan and looking at the next one. "She's hard core, you know that as well as I do."
"If you hadn't turned into just another fat useless snail trail, hadn't traded your goddamn uniform and duty for a stolen wedding ring and worthless REMF cock, you'd remember what it means to be a soldier, remember what it means to be Special Weapons," Henley said. "You'd know good and goddamn well why Cromwell is doing what she is doing and why I can't send someone up that fucking mountain with that goddamn feral animal Stillwater is busy killing every living thing on the surface of that hunk of granite that makes up Satan's butt plug. So unless you have something goddamn useful to say, keep that cock sucking device in the middle of your fat face fucking shut."
Nagle flushed at Henley's words, glared at me at mine, then flushed deeper at what Henley had finished with. She actually looked hurt at Henley's words.
Goddamn it, what had happened to the Nancy Nagle I'd known since I'd met her? That bitch had been made of goddamn iron, with no back down, no flinching from her duty.
"Nagle, a word?" I asked, moving toward the tent flaps.
I didn't bother to see if she was following me as I pushed my way out into the snowy darkness. It took her till after I'd lit a cigarette and put the pack away for her to reach me, standing by Chief Henley's CUC-V.
Snowflakes were drifting down, the storm that had been pounding Alfenwehr now dumping soft flat flakes of snow on me and everything around me. I could see the cooks at the two MKTs preparing to make breakfast for Group, see someone walking back from the generator pit, see a guard patrol moving by the 5-ton trucks.
"What do you want, Bomber?" Nagle asked irritably, moving up next to the CUC-V. It cut down on some of the wind, made it a little more bearable.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I asked her.
"What do you mean?" She asked, turning away from me. She didn't bother asking for one of my cigarettes, just dug her own out of her field jacket pocket. It reminded me I hadn't bothered to put mine on.
"You're being a bitch," I told her flat out.
"Whatever," She tossed back, lighting her cigarette.
"I get it, Nagle, I do," I told her honestly.
"Sure, Johnny," She said.
"LOOK AT ME WHEN I SPEAK TO YOU, GODDAMN IT!" I roared at her, grabbing her shoulder and yanking her around. She flinched slightly when I stepped up into her face, still holding onto the shoulder of her field jacket. Then she slapped her hand against my elbow, grabbed my wrist, and yanked my hand free.
"Nothing gives you the right to grab me like that, Bomber," She snapped, then looked away when I glared at her. "I've been moved to FSTS-295, under Sergeant Hamilton. You're not my squad leader, neither is Stillwater."
"If you don't look at me, right fucking now, I'm going to reach out and rip your goddamn tits off, I swear to fucking God," I growled.
She finally turned and faced me.
"Henley had you brought out here so we can figure something out. Some way to maybe save some of Rear-D," That made her laugh. "What?" I asked her.
"You really think that any of them are still alive?" She looked away, took a drag of her cigarette, and blew out the smoke into the dark and snowy morning. "Henley told him to use extreme prejudice. You and I both know what he's probably doing right now," she shivered, "You know as well as I do that right now he's hunting those people in the barracks with that goddamn knife in his hand." She shuddered again.
"Like you have any room to cast aspersions," I snarled. "You were there too. Or are you going to act like you didn't bayonet a man and fire full auto into his guts?"
She turned slightly, turning even further away from me. "That was a long time ago."
"IT WAS LAST FUCKING WINTER!" I yelled at her. Several people looked in our direction, then looked away.
"Things are different now, Johnny, I don't expect you to understand."
"Then make me understand," I half pleaded with her.
"I'm not the same person as the one who was with you last winter, Johnny," She said. Something in her voice was different. "After I thought Stillwater was..."
"Ant, his name is Ant, Nagle. Ant or Tony, say it."
"No," she said softly. "When he came up missing, I couldn't stand it any more. I was all alone."
"You had me," I tried. She turned away a little more.
"Everything was a reminder of him. The clubs. Atlas. The barracks," she turned back and looked at me. "You."
"He wasn't even gone a week," I started.
"It seemed like forever. You wouldn't get it, Johnny," She said.
My stomach twisted, nausea churning through it as she kept speaking. "Everything was empty, everything reminded me of him, of what I'd lost. I'd met Jerry last year. Once in a while, while you and Stillwater were off doing your own things, or still at Atlas, we'd meet."
She turned and faced me, "He makes me feel new. Like none of what's happened matters. Like nothing before I met him actually happened."
"It's a lie," I told her. "It happened. All of it."
"I can't do it," She told me, "It's too much. It's inhuman to ask this of us," She waved at the tent where Henley was trying to make a difference. "They'll just keep throwing us into it, over and over and over. You've seen Stillwater. You remember what he used to be like. Now look at him. Henley, Alfenwehr, Atlas, hell, Special Weapons and Blackbriar, have turned him into a goddamn monster."
"Don't say that about him," I snarled.
"It's true!" she shouted. "He's not even human any more! There's nothing left but the weapon, nothing left but the monster that they turned him into!"
I balled my fist, using every bit of self-control I had not to knock her ass in the fucking snow.
"I can't do it. I can't stay out at Atlas. I can't be around you guys any longer, Johnny," She said, tears spilling from her eyes. "Last winter, Johnny. We killed them. We hunted them. We chased down every last one of them and slaughtered them in the dark and cold. They didn't stand a chance."
She stared at me, the tears flowing steadily. "They were kids, Johnny. Just kids. Just scared goddamn kids. Most of them weren't even old enough to drink the States, and we hunted them down and Stillwater slaughtered them like sheep." She balled her fists and sobbed. "You saw it, Johnny, the same as I did, the way he went at them. No mercy, no quarter, he just slaughtered them, and I took part. I helped. I helped kill those children."
She turned away from me again, wrapping her arms around herself and hugging herself tight.
"I can't do it any more, Johnny. I'm going to finish my enlistment and just leave." She said. "I'm going to drop from the program, turn in Zulu identifier, and ETS."
"Nagle," I tried, starting to reach for her. "Don't. Ant and I, we both need you. You need us, not Jerry, not some REMF, you need someone who's one of us."
She pushed my hand away, turning away slightly. "No, Johnny. I can't. Not any more. I can't help Blackbriar turn children into weapons any more. I'm not like you and Stillwater, Johnny. I still have some humanity left. I don't want to lose it. Please, Johnny, please understand."
"Don't call me that any more, Nagle," I told her, dropping the cigarette in the snow. It hissed as it went out.
"Call you what?" She asked.
"Johnny. You don't have that right any more," I told her.
I pushed by her, heading back from the tent.
"Johnny, no," She called out. "Please, Johnny, don't walk away."
"You already walked away, Nagle," I threw over my shoulder. "And you lost the right to call me anything but Corporal Bomber."
I pushed my way into the tent.
Leaving her to cry in the dark and snowy morning.
She was weak. She'd given in to her weakness. Alfenwehr destroyed the weak.
And took everyone around them down too.