Kilo-61 (Damned of the 2/19th Book 19)- Ongoing

Children Shouldn't Play Grownup Games

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
0440 Hours

I finished writing down the numbers that the network would spit out and leaned back in the chair, rubbing my eyes and yawning. I glanced at the privates, the E-5, and the LT to see how they were doing. The privates were sleeping in their chairs, the E-5 was flat out asleep, his arms crossed on the counter, head down, and snoring. The LT was over with Heather, their heads close and they were talking low and intently. I could see Heather's eyes gleaming with suppressed psychopathy and wondered how much longer the meds could keep even a thin veneer of Melissa DeMarky over the psychopath Heather Cromwell had become after Africa. Kincaid was swinging his arms, trying to keep circulation going, and I saw him yawn behind the hard Lexan visor.

"Whatcha think, Ant?" Kincaid asked, slogging over to me.

I tapped the screen in front of me. "Figured out why they wanted to trash the servers," I told him. I stood up, yawning, and reached back to pop my back.

"What?" He asked, stepping back as I moved past him, pulling my Leatherman out of my belt holder.

"They moved a shitload of data onto one of the drives. Took me awhile to figure out which one, but I know which of these server racks has it," I stopped in front of one and went through the tool until I got to the phillipshead screwdriver.

"What kind of data?" He asked, moving up to shield what I was doing. I glanced back and noticed that the privates were all more interested in their eyelids than whatever I was doing.

"Not sure. Large group of file transfers out of the Applied Advanced Projects mainframe, and some other shit," I told him. I rubbed my eyes again, then went back to work.

"Hey, Ant," Kincaid's voice was low as he knelt down next to me.

"Sup?" I asked him, working a stubborn screw back and forth to set it right.

He leaned even closer, bumping me with his shoulder. "I was at Henley's funeral, man."

I shot a glare at him, "Shut up, they don't need to know any of that shit."

He turned his head slightly to rub his nose on the velcro inside the helmet, shrugging. "We running that compartmentalized?"

I nodded, carefully pulling off the front plate. I felt resistance and looked over the top of the plate and into the inch gap. I shook my head at what I saw. "K-Bar, hold this, don't pull on it."

He just nodded, that gloved hand coming up to the hold the plate steady. I used the wire cutters to carefully cut the red and yellow striped wire, then took the plate from him to set it down.

"Destruction charge, really?" He asked.

"Would have fired off an electromagnet, blown out the drive," I told him. I started undoing the mounting screws that held the whole server into the cage. Before he could ask I answered him. "I'll have a private carry this. The drive's probably proprietary, I'll steal a fucking laptop out of here to go through it."

He just nodded as I worked silently for a while before slowly sliding the server out and disconnecting it nice and slowly. The goddamn thing weighed about forty pounds. I set it on one of the counters, taking off my LBE. I undid the carrying straps and hooked them to the server, making it easy to carry. I put on the belt then walked over to where one of the privates had set down the reload for Kincaid's baby I'd made him carry.

"Come 'ere, K-Bar," I told him. He nodded and moved up in front of me. The tanks on his bank read about 30% full, but I'd rather not have it run empty if we needed it. We were silent as I swapped out his tanks and I waited for him to let the inert gas out of it with a quick bit of pressure on the ignitor.