Gas & Blood (Damned of the 2/19th Novella) - Rough Draft Finished

Soviet Scrap Metal

FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
25 April, 1986
1600 Hours

"There they go," Timmons said. We were in the grass beside The Fort. We'd gone outside and dropped into the brush, laying there while everyone not assigned to Atlas had rolled out at 0300 this morning. About noon Foster had come outside and fired five spaced M-16 shots into the air. I knew that the signal meant that the tanks had arrived at Perseus. Now the Soviet troops had all piled into their vehicles and were heading out. We'd watched as the GRU officer had thrown a fit, the fuel trucks had left at thirteen hundred hours, and had not come back until two hours ago. They'd spent the next two hours refueling the tanks, R-17's, BMP's, and trucks.

"You called it," I said.

He snorted. "Don't act stupid, Specialist, you knew as well as I did that he'd have no choice but to relocate to keep 1/68th from lunging out of Perseus and flanking him as well as being able to hit the Guards base." He looked at me, and his grin was feral, "They've moving the entire division out now, they have no choice." He looked back through the binoculars at the tanks moving away.

The driving was erratic. They weren't in an orderly line now, they kept grouping up and letting their distances vary.

Another explosion went off.

I didn't even flinch. I was used to it. I'd notice if it didn't happen.

"Now we wait," He said. I lit a cigarette and rolled onto my back, staring at the sky. The weather was for shit, but I was having a good time.

"Current safe road speed for that pack of incompetent fuckups, they won't be in position to block Perseus until almost twenty-hundred," I said, blowing out a smoke ring.

"I know," Timmons said. He lit a cigarette of his own. I'd noticed he had the habit of field stripping his cigarettes. He pulled an MRE candybar out of his pocket and tore it open with his teeth. "Goddamn these are good."

He was ex-military, and not an officer either. He was ex-enlisted, ex-ground pounder, not some rear echelon retard.

He was having a blast.

"How long are we going to be here?" I asked.

"You might as well get some sleep, Specialist. I'll take first watch shift," Timmons told me.

"Works for me," I said. I noticed he hadn't answered my question.

I was beat. Five days of wearing a chemical mask and running around, watching the engineers do shit, making sure the right bunkers were being demo'd and rebuilt. Right now the concrete was curing on the first layer of slabs. At the rate 54th was going, they'd have the bunkers rebuilt by the end of the month.

Chief Henley had come by a few times, screamed at everyone, including Timmons and the other CIA dwonks, then left after threatening to murder us.

Little-Bit had left a note at one of her message drops that she'd ID'd where all the Spetz were hiding, that they were getting strung out by the constant explosions and the CS gas.

Which Timmons was just as immune to as I was.

I folded by hands behind my neck, let my head relax against my helmet webbing, and closed my eyes.

---------------------------

"Psst," Timmons' kick woke me up. I could hear the roar of turbo-diesel engines.

"What the fuck?" I asked, rolling over. It was pitch black and I glanced at my watch. Twenty-two hundred hours. I flipped down my NVG's and turned them on. When I looked out at the road I saw the bumper numbers on the tanks that were rolling onto Atlas.