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

Pacifism Denied

2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
1500 Hours

I'd shed most of the gear I'd taken with me to the ruined Templar fortress. I'd gone back to the cache twice to bring more gear to the Fortress and two other points. One was an old Quonset Hut from before 2/19th had been deployed to Vietnam and wiped out two months into their deployment. We jokingly called it Rally Point Gold, since we'd found putters, golf balls, and astroturf where the guys who had been sent to Vietnam had built themselves a little golf course to pass the time waiting to be sent to The Nam.

The other was the vehicle graveyard. Over the years we'd gotten new vehicles and taken the old pieces of shit we'd been handed off and dropped them to the south of the airfield. Four of the vehicles were the Bradleys that the motorpool guys had picked up from Atlas and brought back, then written off due to the damage. They'd been largely stripped, but the damaged shells remained.

I'd stashed the gear in one, made sure that snowshoes were stashed away, then started planning on what to do.

Now I was laying on an insulated poncho, sweeping one of the scopes back and forth over the snow. I'd seen movement on top of the barracks, but I wasn't ready to go inside the barracks yet. I was worried about the motorpool.

Somewhere under twenty meters of snow was a conex container on a flatbed trailer full of 105mm nuclear weapons that should have been on a ship heading to The World but instead some lazy fucks just dropped it in the motor pool.

Because of those lazy fucks Chief Henley had me on a search and destroy.

I wanted to settle them down, stop the killing, bring back those soldiers from the brink of madness.

Henley wanted me to kill all of them and secure the weapons.

Dammit, there had to be a way to do both.

There had to be something I could do to shift the odds.

I knew that Chief Henley had consulted Kill Shop, had tapped the analyst section, and had, from what he had said, the orders had come from V Corps ChemCorps liason or even worse, he'd gotten his orders from Blackbriar Ridge.

Blackbriar Ridge would look at the records. Look at my murderous rampage against my family. Look at the body count I'd racked up over the years. Blackbriar wouldn't care about the soldiers from the FSB. Blackbriar dealt in absolutes, in facts, and casualty figures were something for history to worry about.

Blackbriar would have ran the numbers in the cold bloodless methods they used and decided that every member of the FSB, and me, were all expendable to secure the weapons. That was the mantra of Special Weapons.

Use. Until. Destruction.

I didn't like it. I didn't want to do what Henley had told me to do.

Weapons free.

I sighed and put down the scope. I'd spotted two of the tunnels in the first ten minutes, spotted the best entrances and exits, and even figured out plans of attacks. The lizard had helped, there was a small bit of protoplasm in his brain that was skilled at tracking tunnels under snow and sand for prey.

He was salivating at the carnage.

I wasn't.

To be honest, I was tired of death.

So tired I had done something. Something that Cromwell knew, Henley knew, but nobody else knew.

Members of Special Weapons were allowed to drop on request from the program, or request one year recuperation duty after completing three years on active Special Weapons duty.