Time/Date Error (Damned of the 2/19th-Book Six) - Done

It Was an Honor

CIA Listening Post #487
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
28 October, 1987
1500

It took some work, mainly because I didn't have any tools past a Leatherman and what little I could scrounge up. I used the nylon straps and the buckles from the backpacks in the survival locker to hold the metal strips in place, and it took me almost two hours to drill holes in the metal strips I took from the bottom of the bunk beds. I used springs from the beds to keep tension, and it took me nearly four hours to make it. It buckled at the top of my thigh, straps to keep my thigh straight, spring tensioned swivel at the knee, strapped to my calf, the looped under the arch of my boot with spring tension loading on the ankle swivels.

When I stood up it didn't feel like my knee was going to buckle at any second and it was able to hold my weight with only teeth gritting pain. My thigh hurt, badly, but it was the pain of a deep bruise rather than ground glass so I could handle it. The makeshift brace squealed and made sproinging noises when I moved, and it took the stress off of my swollen ankle too. I wasn't sure what I'd done to my ankle, nothing really stood out, but I'd badly damaged my leg earlier in the year, my knee and thigh taking the worst of it.

Satisfied I'd be able to stand without doing too much more damage to my leg I staggered around the listening post again, double-checking everything. The safe was still ice cold and I knew I had enough C-4 to cut through the safe like butter.

If I knew how, which honestly, I didn't.

What I did have was lockpick training and all the time in the world. It was a simple standard forty point dial and triple tumbler with an opening handle. Those were usually good enough, but the cold would provide additional tricks.

On the eighth try the safe gave up its secrets, opening up.

Bullseye.

Two 9mm Beretta M9 service pistols with three magazines each. The console for the standard RF band transceiver. A codebook. A can of thermite grenades.

A part of me, a younger part, wanted to grab the two pistols and storm the barracks, kill the cannibals, take back my unit. My home.

But that was the younger me talking, the junior NCO, the one who didn't have any responsibilities beyond keeping my crew alive and keeping Atlas in war fighting condition. Henley had spent a lot of time and effort to force me to grow up, to bring out what he had seen in me that very few others had seen.

The Mission was simple: Contact command.

Searching the rest of the building I found the battery backup and a few other interesting things. What was interesting was that someone had took the conditions into account when they'd built the battery backup and the housing. It was insulated nine ways to Sunday, the batteries kept in storage mode, and they had three quarters of a charge.

Tracing the breakers was rough. Not the time or difficulty, but moving around. The cold was really settling into my leg, my thigh aching with shooting pains every other step and my knee nothing but throbbing agony. I had to pause twice to cough. Wracking coughs that took me forever before I could straighten up.

Still within operational parameters though.

...the body is a meat machine, driven by the orders of the brain, which is driven by your will...

...strong mind. strong body. strong will...

Once I was sure that the only thing turned on was the communication panel, the antenna's signal boosters, and the transmitter at the top of the tower, I started work on the transceiver itself.

I used the Leatherman to reconnect everything, checking it twice before hitting the power. The needles pegged, then dropped back down while I had another coughing fit. Battery power was at 73% and started dropping real fast when the system warmed up. I hadn't bothered to hook up speakers, just used one of the headsets. I silently thanked Foster for all the training over the years, and began moving through the dials. Silence on most channels, if I discounted the ionosphere crap. A preacher in Texarkana, a PBS show out of Jersey, a strung out sounding DJ in Alaska, and some hippie in Cali. A number station or six, then the Wildflicken Range Control channel was live.