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

Into the Dark and Cold

2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
1700 Hours

The grenade started hissing before it was even a handful of feet from me. I'd milked it, letting pressure off the spoon so that the striker had hit the fuze. I'd done it enough times I knew exactly how long to hold it. I'd started when she'd started talking, when I'd known she had seen there were enough people to back her up that she felt safe.

I was still going to saw her fucking ear off.

Yellowish white smoke spewed out, quickly blooming into the room. The grenade hit the far wall of the room, bounced, and arced out the door.

Everyone's eyes followed it as I bellowed out "GRENADE!" and kept moving forward.

Two stabs, two down, both of them just going limp with a sigh as the Gerber slid in through the back, found the heart, and slid back out. The guy on the end got his hand up, opened his mouth to scream, and the blade slid through his eye and into his brain before he could scream.

I was still moving.

"GAS!" someone got out.

The lizard was updating the targeting system as I came around the table.

...eliminate all personnel with extreme prejudice...

...goddamn you, Henley, you knew how this would play out...

Cut the man's throat, shift, the next woman was standing up, her mouth open to scream.

"GAS!" was all she got out before I stabbed her low, both sides, and moved on. Captain Rebel was standing up, her hands automatically going to her waist where he mask should have been.

It wasn't.

She screamed as I dragged her backwards, onto the floor, going down with her.

Bullets howled overhead, shattering the windows, letting in the snow which poured in.

I grabbed her ear and twisted,

...sorry, I lied...

pushed my forearm against her head as someone else stood up and caught bullets that were probably meant for me, and twisted harder.

Her ear came off in my hand.

People were coughing, gagging.

"GAS! GAS GAS!" someone finally choked out.

I threw another CS grenade over the table, and followed it with a third. Captain Rebel was screaming, holding onto the side of her head, but I ignored her to toss the CS grenades.

This wasn't how I had wanted it, wasn't how I wanted it to go down, but they'd forced it.

I'd known the minute I'd walked through the pantry that this was going to go down bad.

The smell of fried pork had been thick through the mess hall. I could taste on my tongue, feel it coating me.

The mess hall had exactly one week of MRE's for the entire Group, and I knew that they would have loaded roughly half into the trucks to take to Graf.

They'd been out of MRE's for a while, the propane tanks for the mess hall, if they were topped off, would have lasted a week, maybe two, if they were being used for heat. You'd have to bring the extra tanks up from the secure fuel locker, but with all the snow...

People were retching and coughing and the CS gas thick enough that it was making my one good eye tingle. I stood up and moved to the door. Someone lifted a rifle but I grabbed it out of his hands and buttstroked him before moving through the door. I could see a couple of people had put their shirts against their mouths, but that wouldn't save their eyes. Most of them were on their hands and knees, retching out thick ropes of saliva and mucus.