15th Forward Support Battalion Barracks Area
Fort Hood, Texas
CONUS
19 September, 1991
1500 Hours
It was raining outside when I led SPC Donovan across the parking lot, reaching under the bottom edge of my BDU top to the D-Ring attached to my belt loop. Thunder rumbled off in the distance as I pointed my keys at one of the cars in the parking lot.
I couldn't resist glancing at Donovan's face.
He was rolling his eyes since I was pointing my keys at a beige compact car.
His eyes widened in shock when the lights my car flashed and a truck horn gave a deep bass boop instead of the little sedan.
"That..." he stared at me. "That's your..."
"My car. Yes," I told him.
There was a good reason for that. I'd seen people staring at my car since I'd parked it last week. It wasn't exactly what someone thought of when they thought of a woman's car, and I'd deliberately driven my little compact or just walked when I had to go somewhere on post rather than drive my baby.
Mainly because I wanted to shock people.
My baby was a jet black 1969 Ford F-1 Mustang, with a 428 Cobra Jet engine, dual carbs, blower, chromed to the gills, dark tinted windows, and jacked up eight inches in the back. Hell, I'd put so much chrome into the engine I'd gone with the clear Lexan hood to show everything off.
"Don't walk into that Chevy," I told him. He jerked, pulling his attention to where he was walking instead of alternating between staring at me and staring at Blackrazor in shock.
Yeah, yeah, I'd stolen the name for my car from one of the old S-series AD&D modules, but there was just something about it.
"Where did this thing come from?" He stammered as I opened the door.
"Detroit," I joked. He frowned and I sighed. "Never mind."
I got in and settled into the leather bucket seat, reaching back for the shoulder harness part of the five point restraint. He got in, looking around nervously.
"Watch me," I told him. He flushed slightly when I grabbed the locking mechanism between my legs and pulled it up so I could start strapping myself in.
"Why not normal seatbelts?" He asked, copying me.
"Why not drive a Jap crap-box while I'm at it?" I snapped back. That made him flush.
"This thing looks like you stole it off the set of Mad Max," He said.
That made me chuckle. "It was what I was shooting for when I started, but I decided I liked gloss black with metallic flake paint when I was done," I reached forward and ran my hand across the dash. "Rebuilt her myself. Bondo, grease, sweat, blood, and bad breath," I grinned at him and leaned back into the seat.
"You're, no offense, not what I expected," He said as I put the key in the ignition. Gave my baby some power, then hit the switches for the fuel pumps and to charge the system.
I'd done a lot of work on Blackrazor over the years.
"First rule, son, the file is not the man and the man is not the file," I told him, turning to stare at him. "I learned that from someone who knew his stuff."
He pointed at the picture on the dash. "One of them?"
I glanced at the picture. The Atlas Crew. I'd taken it at the end of REFORGER 88. We were all smiling. Dirty, tired, but smiling.
And we looked so young. Even Stillwater.
"Yeah," was all I said, and fired up the engine to cut off any conversation.
We hit Battalion Avenue and I let off the throttle, letting him idle down the road in second gear.
"All right, we're going to go to the motor pool and PMCS my vehicle," I told him. He looked surprised at how quiet the engine was, and I didn't feel like telling him just how much sound suppression I'd built into my baby.
"This thing?" He asked.
That made me laugh. "No, Humvee-5, the CO gave it to me," I glanced at him. "You're my new driver, radioman, note taker and monkey."
He frowned slightly.
"Got plans for tonight after dinner?" I asked him.
He looked started and flushed a little, but still shook his head.
"Nothing like that, you hammerhead," I snapped, "Your last PT test was over a year ago, and it was piss poor. I was going to take you to the gym and see about putting some meat on your bones."
He looked a little mournful at that as I turned the corner and idled into the parking lot across the from the motorpool. The gate guards were definitely paying attention, and I couldn't resist revving the engine a few times to draw some of 15th FSB to the front of the motor pool to see just who in the hell was driving the car.
I shut her down, counted to ten, and hit the switches.
Blackrazor was an attention whore.
When I got out, putting my hat on, I could tell that I was the last person everyone had expected to get out.
The file is not the man...
"Let's go, Specialist Donovan," I snapped, shutting the door. He shut his gingerly, something I appreciated. I thumbed the lock and alarm button on my fob and hooked my D-ring to my pocket as I walked toward the motorpool, slapping my plastic folder against my leg.
"What are you all standing around for?" I bellowed out. "Haven't you ever seen a car or a Chief Warrant Officer before? If you don't have anything to do, I'm certain I can find all of you something to occupy your time till about twenty hundred hours!"
The crowd broke up quick.
The mechanics were giving me the eye when I went inside the bay, and I knew they were wondering if I'd paid someone to trick out Blackrazor or if a boyfriend/husband had done it, and I doubted any of them thought that I'd done it.
They probably wouldn't believe I'd spent two hours with a tap and die set pulling a snapped bolt out of the block one Saturday afternoon. Or that I could take apart a HMMWV or CUC-V to the frame and rebuild it.
Alfenwehr had turned me into a gear head. Colonel Henry (No Relation) had insisted we all find hobbies and entertainment that didn't come out of a bottle. I'd mentioned I'd always wanted a Mustang, Stillwater had talked to one of his cousins who was in Germany, and we'd paid to have the rusted sad half-wreck towed to the Alfenwehr body shop. Then I'd learned how to fix and rebuild everything on her over the course of a year.
It had done me good to have hobbies other than getting drunk and trying to punch out a stop sign.
It was pretty easy to navigate to the main office and look around for who was in charge. A large white Master Sergeant by the name of Prager was obviously the man in charge, so I walked up in front of his desk and stood politely at Parade Rest until he looked up. Donovan stayed over by the doorway, leaning against the wall with his hands behind him.
The Master Sergeant seemed a bit startled I was waiting like that.
"Can I help you, Chief, uh, Cromwell?" he asked me.
"Humvee-Five has been assigned to me," I told him, smiling. I pointed at the chair. "May I sit?"
"Of course, Chief," He said. He looked slightly startled. The chair creaked slightly as I sat down in it, the pins in my pelvic bone reminding me they wouldn't fully set for a year with a twinge of pain.
"Thank you," I smiled at him, putting my camo folder in my lap and tapping it. "I'll need to draw a SINCGARS radio for it," I told him, referring to the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System, which was a frequency agile, compression and cryptography enabled combat net radio. Foster had taught us all to use it when we'd gotten it at Atlas back in 1988.
"I'd prefer the 1523 model, but if all we have is the 1439 I'm fine with that one too," I told him, leaning back slightly. My left hip popped, loudly, and I winced.
"You all right, Chief?" He asked. A couple people had turned to look.
"Hips ache in cold weather. Fat girl problem," I grinned. "Now, I need a man-pack cradle for it too, if you have one."
"We have the 1439, and the pack carrier," he said, jotting down a note.
"I know your mechanics are busy, what's the schedule look like on the bay?" I asked him.
He consulted his notes. "We've got two 5-tons, a forklift, a HEMMIT, two CUC-V's, and a humvee ambulance that need repair," he said, shaking his head. "It'd be a week or so before we can get your humvee in for a full workup."
That made me smile as I opened my folder and pulled out one of my certification sheets. "Can I put it up on jacks here in the motorpool, or do I have to take it out to the dirt lot out back?"
He looked at the sheet, his eyes widened, and he looked back at me. "You're certified for light vehicle repair?"
I shrugged, waving at the paper. "That copy's for your records. My last unit was a hardship posting, we couldn't depend on having access to our mechanics or Third Shop, so those of us who could learned to repair our vehicles up to Army standards."
I waved behind me at the parking lot, "Blackrazor shows that it turns out I'd actually make a good grease monkey."
That caused him to raise an eyebrow. "You did all that?"
"Yup, summer of 88 and 89. Started with a rusty wreck we pulled out of the Privately Owned Vehicle wrecking yard, built that out of it. Not all manufacturer parts, but we were ordering stuff from the auto shop on post in Germany," I told him.
"Well, Chief, if you don't mind, I'll assign one of my men to watch over you while you work on it," He was trying to avoid offending me, probably expecting I'd throw a fit, but I could tell the idea of a Joanie-Come-Lately Chief Warrant Officer tearing apart one of his vehicles was probably one of his particularly haunting nightmares.
"You've gotta have someone on profile that can't do their normal duties you can spare to watch a fat girl tear apart an engine."
He nodded at that. "A couple."
"I'm not saying I expect it to be a hunk of junk, Master Sergeant," I reassured him, "But I know that since everyone returned to the Gulf the money that government is supposed to be spending to refit us after a major kinetic conflict seems to be missing, and I don't know or trust the last person who was in charge of that humvee. For all know, they don't know the difference between standard and metric."
That made him nod and smile. Good, he was looking past my fat tits at the soldier.
"You're a bit different than I'd been led to expect, Chief," He said.
"And you're not sure if that's a good thing," I smiled. That made him smile back hesitantly.
"Anything else you need, Chief?" He asked, somewhat awkwardly.
I shook my head, pushing myself to my feet. My hip popped again and I saw his eyelid twitch. It actually felt good. "No, thank you, Master Sergeant. I'll just take the dispatch and log for Five, go and PMCS it, and go from there. I'll probably start working on it tomorrow, since it's a little late tonight and I've got a lot to handle."
He just nodded, looking over at a PFC. "Gadfry, give the Chief the dispatch and log for Humvee-Five."
I turned and waited till the young PFC (God, they all looked so young) handed me the two plastic folders, and headed back out into the bay. I took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of grease, hot metal, solvent, and good old fashioned sweat. Donovan ran to catch up as I headed toward the vehicles, which were in a separate fenced in area at the back.
"We really going to work on it ourselves?" He asked me.
I nodded. "The enemy has cut you off from support, with the rapidly moving battlefield, you're between twenty and fifty miles behind enemy lines now. Your vehicle will not start, just makes a clicking noise," I gave him the scenario. "Now, survive."
He shook his head. "Damn, Chief."
"I once went eight months at a work site without ever seeing my barracks or the unit main body," I told him. "All the work was done on-site. Any vehicle that was too far gone we put into neutral and shoved into the blast ditch to keep it out of the way. That was unacceptable then, it's unacceptable now."
I'll be honest. I half expected the vehicle to have bullet scars, maybe a damaged quarter panel, maybe a missing windshield. It was what I expected after 2/19th. I opened the log-book and checked. It had failed PMCS repeatedly and was deadlined, but no mechanic had looked at it in over a month. Since nobody was assigned to it, it wasn't a priority vehicle like the ambulances or any of the assigned vehicles. It hadn't gone to Desert Storm, never left Fort Hood, and was roughly two years old.
When we walked down the line of angled, dress right dress parked vehicles, it was easy to find.
An armored version. Series One armor, but still armored. Tires weren't flat, it was painted that ugly brown "sand" color with thick CARC paint that was rough to the touch. I glanced underneath it and saw someone had kicked a drip pan under the tranny.
I stood up, checked my watch, saw it was only 1530, and smiled.
"Well, let's get started. Ain't nothing get done just eyeballin' it," I quoted, pulling open the driver's side door with the shriek of protesting metal.
Donovan looked somewhat mournful.