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

Other Men's Fight

FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
28 April, 1986
0900 Hours

The radiation levels kept rising, and I'd used the Gypsy Wagon to drive about 60 miles away and check the levels of radiation there twice the day before. Not as bad as Atlas. The weird weather pattern s of the Fulda Gap were dropping heavy rains on us, but eight miles away you could stand there and watch it rain on the woods that surround Atlas and enjoy the warm spring sunshine. I stripped off my poncho and stood in the sunshine for a long time, steam rising off my damp uniform, closing my eyes and lifting my fact to the sun.

I'd driven back to Atlas after checking eight points driving nearly five hours total, and finding that the mountains were probably saving Western Germany from a shitload of fallout. When I got back I fired a green star-cluster flare, walked across the 1K Zone, and took a reading there. The Soviet troops stared nervously. One big moron stepped in front of me, made fun of my parentage in Russian, but backed down when I answered that I'd stomp his ass like a little kid if he didn't move in the same language.

The new GRU officer introduced himself to me. He seemed a lot more stable than the other guy, and I doubted his grand-father had been shot for cowardice on the Eastern Front during World War Two. The GRU guy understood that Stillwater had ordered his predecessor killed out of a personal disagreement, not between our two countries.

He understood that old Texas: "Some men just gotta die."

As we were walking toward the border he asked me if I would get him a couple porno mags featuring Mexican women. I laughed, gave him a pack of smokes, which he was surprised at, since it was an unopened pack of Winstons, which I knew were a lot better than the crappy East German smokes he was probably pulling down.

He had ordered the Soviet armor and the R-17's off the Zone, and told me he had sent them back to their bases in order to deescalate the situation. I let him know we needed our armor units there for security, but I'd drop it back to a dozen of them as a show of faith.

Neither of us mentioned the Hawk or the Patriot wagons, Combat Talon, or 11th ACR still holding position.

I'd walked back to the Gypsy Wagon and drove it uprange, stripping down and dropping the uniform into the plastic bucket that we'd been dropping them into. Sergeant Bonnham had driven back to Group and gotten over a dozen uniforms for everyone, as well as boots, socks, bras, underwear, and battle rattle.

We left the battlerattle and boots she brought in The Fort, and strapped on our contaminated stuff when we went outside.

Timmons had gone inside the commo room when Foster had ducked outside and told him that he had a phone call over the secure line. That was the only line that we were allowed to use, we were still under Special Weapons doctrine and protocols. The only people who knew anything had gone down out here was V-Corps, ChemCorps, and Blackbriar. The Joint Chiefs had been advised we had a situation, but from what I'd been told, the Joint Chiefs had been informed by Blackbriar that the situation was currently in hand and being investigated.

For over 24 hours we had been checking the levels of radiation, watching them rise slowly. Something bad had happened in the Soviet Union, and so far we had no clue. We were taking our readings, and I knew that it was considered Top Secret, Secret From Birth, nobody was to hear about it.

I knew that meant that not even the Senate, the House, or the President had been informed.

"We've got an update," Timmons told me, sitting down in one of the folding chairs.