Kilo-29 (Damned of the 2/19th, Book 15)

Part 3

Site Kilo-29-Civil Defense Area
United States of America
Winter, 1993
Day One-Night

The Major wanted to park the vehicles in the Civil Defense Motor Pool and I wanted him to park them in the tunnel and leave the Hemmits and at least 1 Humvee outside under guard with instructions on how to open the door, but he overrode me, the Suits sneered at me, and I ended up examining the keypad.

"Can you open it?" The Major asked.

"Yes, sir." I told him, holding down the "E" key.

"What are those pills you're always chewing on? You a painkiller addict?" he asked me.

"Medication, sir." I answered.

"What kind of medication, Sergeant?" He asked as I checked the serial number on the plate. It started with 640, which I'd learned meant it was not only security charge trapped, but would lock down the facility if it was tampered with unless the outer detectors had detected a burst of radiation within the last few hours.

"Medication." I repeated, paging through the book to the red section again and looking up the code group again.

"Sergeant." His voice held a warning.

"Sir, the medication I take is none of your business. You aren't my CO, you're just the mission commanding officer, and I won't tell you about things I don't have to." I told her, pressing "ENTER" on the keypad.

"I could..." Whatever he could do vanished as the klaxons cut in, red lights embedded in the walls began to rotate, and the door dropped two feet away from us and began to retract into the stone wall.

The door was obviously five feet thick and locked into the slot on the far side, a two, maybe three foot thick tab of the door.

On the other side of the door lights were turning on, hanging lights with standard bulbs. Probably a dozen exploded in sparks, but enough stayed on for me to see dozens of pickup trucks, cars, some civilian ambulances, and more than a few cop cars that were painted white under the thick dust.

Something started nagging at me.

"You, stand here and hold your thumb on the 'ENTER' key and watch the readout. If it flashes a number or letter at you, hold down that key instead." I told one of the Meatheads. He nodded and moved over to the keypad, staring at it.

On the ground was a thick dotted yellow line and I started following it. The Major called out my name, but I ignored him.

I'd made the decision.

I didn't know why he was assigned this duty, I didn't know what the deal was with the Suits, and I sure as shit didn't give a flying fuck about the Meatheads, but as far as I was concerned since I was the only Special Weapons troop on the mission, they were here to facilitate my orders, not the other way around.

The emblems of the MILCOM and US Army Strategic Missile Command told me that this was a Special Weapons hard-site, and if there had been one thing I'd learned about Special Weapons is that things quickly got... complicated.

The Major and his Meatheads didn't belong in my Army, and I didn't belong in theirs.

The dotted line curved and led me to the side wall, where "SECONDARY DECON" and "PRIMARY DECON/ENTRY MEDICAL" was stenciled on the doorway.

I stopped, running through my head the possibilities. If you wanted to do maintenance on the vehicles, you wouldn't want to go through decon every time, but at the same time, there was no choice but to park contaminated vehicle next to uncontaminated ones, so they'd always go through a decon station just to be sure.

I tried to decide if I should bother trying to explain it to the Major. I'd tried to explain to someone what I did when I was gone from First Cavalry for such long amounts of time and they laughed at me and told me I was full of shit, that there was no such things as underground bases.

Even though I was currently standing with hundreds of feet of solid rock above my head.

It made sense that motor pool access would link up with the medical bay, in case of injuries, and dual decon stations just in case.

I moved over to the door and checked. No code keypad this time, just a heavy lever on the right side of the door. It was currently in the down position, and from what I'd seen it didn't matter which position it was at, the bar would have to be flipped the other direction and then the lever on the other side thrown to close the door unless the weight pads didn't detect anyone for the duration of the timer. I'd seen the inside of the mechanism and knew that when the lever was thrown it wound a timer and locked a tab into a recess that slowly retracted unless pressure was put on the plate, in which case the tab would move back up. The tab kept the winder from starting, but once it started, the door would shut after a minute or two and give a warning. It was a brute force, non-electronic system. Most of the systems in the outer sections of the site would be analogue systems and mechanical, rather than solid state or digital which could be blown by a EMP pulse.

Back in the day we'd found out that Soviet Union's weapon only put out a maximum of 300 Watts of EMP, so we'd built everything for a 350 Watt tolerance, then some smartass from the New York Times found out about it, published an article, and two years later we'd managed to get information that the Soviets had started using enhanced jacketed weapons to produce a 400 Watt pulse, meaning we had to go hard, most of becoming mechanical, or having repeated shielding, breakers, and grounding to keep the system from blowing out. That meant heavy gauge wiring everywhere. It wasn't uncommon to find aluminum strips in a web around high profile electronics.

My Army was strange and only made sense if you believed what I'd been taught.

Nuclear war was winnable.

None of that mattered at the moment, except for the way my brain was running to try to figure out the Kilo Site based on the limited data I possessed.

The motor pool was massive, I could count thirty vehicles receding into the darkness, and twenty rows on either side. Its sheer size started giving me suspicions about what this Kilo Site was.

Vehicles were being pulled into the motor pool, and I could see a dusting of snow on the Hemmits, the Suits car, and two of the Humvees. The sight of the snow made my blood run cold.

Fuck you and your snowmen! echoed through my brain and I felt a cold trickle down my spine. I pinched the bridge of my nose to drive the memories back.

We made it, Ant, we made it... bubbled up in my brain. I reached into my pocket and fished out the bottle, rattling one of the small bitter pills into my mouth, then put the bottle away while I chewed on it.

I threw the lever and the door slowly opened over the course of about 5 seconds. It was only about a foot thick and only recessed about six inches. The lights came on, and only two blew out, with only about a third not coming on at all. The hallway wasn't too long, about five feet, with another door which stated "DECONTAMINATION" on it. To the right of the door was a sign of a cartoon man standing under a cartoon shower scrubbing himself with cartoon bubbles hiding his crotch. "WASH THOROUGHLY!" was the caption beneath. On the left was a sign that said "INTERNAL PERSONNEL THROUGH LEFT AFTER DOOR" which made me smile. I'd be able to haul my gear through a dry area. I had wet weather gear in my ruck, and everything else was wrapped in waterproof bags or Glad bags, but I'd rather stay dry. The sign just to the left of the doorway I was standing in read "CD MOTORPOOL, CAUTION OF CONTAMINATION!" and on the right was what looked like an old microphone but what I recognized as a sensitive chemical and radiation detector. The circular readout above it showed green, and I knew that if it detected anything it didn't like it would flip to red or yellow. Judging from the size of the green wedge, it had at least 8 wedges, probably 2 safe, then chemical and radiation warnings.

The place was complex, and that warned me to be careful.

"Sergeant Ant." The Major. I was saved. Hooray. I turned around, and he waved me toward him. He waited patiently while I closed the door behind me and walked back over to him in roughly the center of the motor pool.

"Yes, sir?" I asked politely.

"Private Meyers says that visibility is less than 10 feet out there." He said. "There's also no radio reception, so we might as well find a place to bunk down and then see if the storm breaks."

...five miles, we won't make it a mile out there...

"There shouldn't be any security charges in here, but you'll need me to find out where we can bunk down and to make sure that it's clear." I told him. "Trust me, Major, you want to let me do my job."

"There weren't any site blueprints." The Major said.

"Doesn't matter. If I get some time, I can figure out the layout." I answered.

"How many times have you done this?" he asked.

"Enough." I answered.

"I'm starting to get fed up with your insubordination, Sergeant." The Major snapped. "I'm tired of asking you questions and you not answering them."

I turned and faced him.

"General Harmon told you all about me that you need to know." I told him, just staring.

"He didn't tell me anything."

"He told you what you needed to know." I reiterated.

"Sergeant Ant, I'm in charge of this mission." He said.

keep fucking thinking that...

"And I think you need to start answering questions." He told me.

"It's called 'Need to Know', sir." I told him, staring at him square in the eyes. "Which is why I'm attached to your team. You don't have a need to know."

The Meatheads were wandering around as the Major's eyes hardened and he opened his mouth, jumping when the klaxon suddenly kicked on again.

"Fuck, the doors!" I said, whipping around. The Meathead was missing, which meant the system was automatically closing the doors unless someone punched in the reply code the system would be demanding. I had about a minute to get to the control panel and punch in the code again. It was a security in case the people coming in only had the strength to get inside and had died, or were too busy to shut the doors or too nuke-shocked.

The Major grabbed my arm.

"You'll start talking to me right now." He told me.

"Sir, I need to punch in the code or the doors will shut." I warned him.

"I ordered Donaldson to park Humvee Sixteen and Humvee Eight in the door paths." His voice was full of his own cleverness, and I just stared for a second, shocked.

"Why?" I knew the answer, but I couldn't believe his stupidity.

"To keep those doors from closing. Now I want..."

"You fucking idiot!" I yelled at him, knocking his hand away and running for the keypad.

"Sergeant Ant!" he called after me. "Stop him!"

Ten feet from the interior keypad two of the Meatheads grabbed me, and I tried to push them off me, unwilling to go full force.

"Where the hell are you going, Sergeant?" Meathead #6 asked me.

"Let me go, I've got to punch in the code!" I yelled, trying to pull free. I could hear the thumping of the hydraulic cylinders hammering the air.

"The doors won't close, I had a vehicle parked in front of each of them." The Major had come up behind me.

"It's not going to matter." I said, trying again to pull free.

rip... tear... smash... My mouth filled with a hot coppery taste.

"Those are armored military vehicles, I hardly think..." The Major started.

The scream of warping metal filled the air, a howling scream that shuddered through the air like the screaming of lost souls.

"They won't close all the way." The Major tried.

"Those are fucking 200 ton doors powered by hydraulics capable of moving them after they're warped and maybe even jumped the goddamn tracks!" I yelled over the sound of the metal shrieking. "The front of those doors are wedges, so that it will reseat itself."

"Then we can open them." The Major didn't sound as confident as he did before.

"Goddamn it, you don't get it, do you? This is a fucking hard site, a See Oh Gee and ARMICOM hard site, designed to not only survive a nuclear war but fight one!" I yelled back. "Kilo Sites are God knows what, and you JUST FUCKING LOCKED US IN HERE!"

The squealing stopped, and I could hear the other Meatheads shouting that the motor pool door was closing.

...show me what you've got, bitch! Come on, show me what you've got, you pussy!... sounded out in my skull, and my missing earlobes burned, my nose burst into cold pain, and an icicle drove into my shoulder.

"I DON'T KNOW HOW THE SYSTEM IS GOING TO REACT TO BLOCKAGES, YOU GODDAMN MORON!" I shouted at the Major.

"Call off your idiots." I told him. "Or it'll get ugly."

"Stand down!" The Major yelled. They let me go.

Toothpick Suit was coming over, one hand in his jacket.

"You pull that pistol, I'll fucking feed it to you." I snarled, taking two skipping steps forward and moving right into his face.

The motor pool door closed with a solid boom, and the PA came on.

"ALL SHIFT LEADERS TAKE HEADCOUNT AND REPORT TO CIVIL DEFENSE LEADER!" Boomed out. "ALL REFUGEES TO MEDICAL AND DECONTAMINATION!"

I stood eye to eye with Toothpick, willing him to pull the pistol so I could jam it under his chin and blow his smarmy fucking brains all over the ceiling.

The message repeated itself as we stood there facing each other. I was grinding my teeth, my shoulders bunching up.

"Sergeant Ant, post!" The Major yelled. I kept staring at Toothpick. "Sergeant Ant!"

"Do it." I whispered. "We both know it's coming, Company Man, let's do it right now."

I hated CIA agents.

The message repeated, and I noticed that it had a dragging sound to it.

Toothpick shook his head, fear flickering through his eyes. I heard a noise behind me and turned around, seeing the Major coming up.

"What do you mean we're trapped here?" He asked. I felt Toothpick move and turned to look at him, stepping back so I wasn't caught between Toothpick and the Major.

"I don't know how the system is going to react to the blockage." I told him, staring at Toothpick, who was slowly pulling his hand out of his jacket.

"What do you mean, 'react', Sergeant Ant?" The Major asked. "Computers can't react."

"The system might decide the blockage is due to a nuclear war disabling the vehicles, if either vehicle caught fire the system will register the temperature and might think it's the thermal bloom." I told him. I pointed at the Meatheads, who were coming back over. "We need to get one thing straight, Major."

"What's that?"

"Your Meatheads touch me again, I'll start hurting them. Don't do anything unless I tell you that it's OK, I don't want the system doing a 'purge' on us." I snarled. "And if I even think the Suits are threatening me, I'll fuck them up."

"I'm in charge of..." The Major said.

"Fine, sir, then what do we do?" I asked, folding my arms. "This is your show, give the orders."

"Open the door." He ordered me.

"How?" I asked, fumbling for my pill bottle and opening it with my thumb and forefinger.

"Punch in the code, you moron!" He snapped. I rattled a pill into my mouth and started chewing it.

"Fine. Which code?" I asked.

"Out of the book." He told me like I was a simpleton. I shook my head, stuffing the pill bottle back into my pocket.

"I won't do it." I told him.

"Private Smith, get the codebook." He ordered.

"You have him punch in any code, he's dead." I warned. "The security charge will turn him into hamburger if the system has gone into lockdown."

"How do you know?"

"Because while you've been taking apart bases belonging to the regular Army, I've been taking these places apart." I told him.

"It's just an underground storage bunker, and I don't believe conspiracy theories." He told me.

I couldn't help it, I started laughing.

"Look the fuck around you." I told him, waving my arms around. "Does this look like some bullshit?" I pointed at the now closed heavy blast deflection door. "Tell me again how you don't believe in 'conspiracy theories', sir." I pointed at the Suits, gathered up and glaring at me. "Look at them, tell me that you even know what they're here for."

The Major was just staring.

"THIS ISN'T YOUR ARMY!" I yelled at him. "THIS IS MINE!"

The migraine came flooding in, bringing a hot copper taste to my mouth and the feeling of something icy cold sliding into my shoulder. My head was pounding, and I wanted nothing more than to remove the obstruction in front of me.

With a knife.

I knew that I needed to calm down, that I needed to stop before it went to far, so I took a deep breath while the Major just stared at me.

"Sir, what happened to the Private I told to keep the doors from closing?" I asked.

"I tasked him with putting vehicles in the way of the doors." He told me.

"Listen to me, Major." I tried to get through to him. "These facilities represent hundreds of millions of dollars out of black budgets. They were beyond cutting edge when they were retrofitted, and you'd be surprised how much you can do with simple decision trees when you're programming." I took another deep breath, and the pounding in my head started to ease. "The system wasn't programmed by some kid in a basement, this was programmed by NASA, and they sent a man to the Moon with little better than solid state punch cards."

"Fine, Sergeant Ant, since you seem to know everything, what do you suggest?" The Major was being snide, but I didn't care. He was about an inch from getting stabbed anyway. I'd huck his body down a shaft and claim he fell or just vanish him. Worse came to worse I'd just stab his ass and stuff him in the trunk of that Air Force sedan. The throbbing in my temples was slowly receding, but that had nothing to do with the fact I'd kill him in a heartbeat.

Four times officers had almost cost me my life, four times they'd actively tried to kill or injure me and my friends.

Never again.

"Keep your men in here. Unload the trucks, wait for me. If I'm not back in two hours fort up here and wait for extraction." I told him.

"Where are you going?" He asked.

"I'm going to see if I can gain access to the Civil Defense control room, see if I can get access to the computer system." I told him. "I'll need one of your Meatheads, but you better warn him that if he doesn't do exactly as I say, I'll kill him before he gets me killed."

"CIVIL DEFENSE COORDINATOR PLEASE REPORT TO COMMAND!" rang out over the PA system. The system repeated it again and I stared at the Major.

"Sir, I don't know this site's mission, I don't know its protocol, I don't know what the system will do."

"How can it do anything?" One of the Meatheads asked. I ignored him. The PA repeated itself.

"The system might have some serious defenses." I warned. "Not much is known about Kilo sites."

The Major stared at me for a long time, and I could hear the Meatheads mumbling. The fact that the Suits were not struck me. The PA repeated itself twice more, cutting off with a click in the middle of the second time.

"Fine, you can have Donaldson." The Major told me. "Donaldson, post."

The Meathead ran over and saluted and I restrained a sigh.

"Go with Sergeant Ant, do what he tells you." The Major stated. "He's going to try to reopen the doors."

I walked off while the Major was telling the Meathead not to fuck with me, slamming my shoulder into Toothpick. I went over to my Humvee and opened the rear passenger door. I grabbed my rucksack, gas mask, chemical gear, and tossed the Meathead two of my duffle bags. I pulled on my LBE, strapped on my gas mask, hung my chemical gear on my LBE, then shrugged into my rucksack. I dropped the Civil Defense code book onto a D-Ring attached to my LBE, letting it tap on my right hip.

"What's in these?" The Meathead asked me.

"My gear." I answered. I threw him two dufflebags. "Pick those up and follow me."

Off to the side the Major was telling the Meatheads to take inventory on the food in the trucks as well as the water.

I stopped when I heard what sounded like slithering off in a patch of darkness, then shook my head and feed myself another pill to grind up between my teeth.

Throwing the lever back up, I waved the Meathead in, then threw the other lever up so the door shut, then threw the lever on the Decon room door.

It looked like a locker room, and I knew the metal door on the other side of the locker room led to high pressure showers. To my left was a door marked "INTERNAL PERSONNEL ONLY" and I headed toward that after closing the door.

"What the hell is all this?" the Meathead asked.

His name is Donaldson...

I didn't care. I refused to care.

"Decontamination shower changing room. In the lockers will be jumpsuits, coveralls, maybe old radiation or chemical suits, and probably the uniform for this site." I answered. One of the lights buzzed and then exploded in a shower of sparks. The room was still ice cold, but that didn't surprise me. The Meathead jumped but I ignored it.

The system repeated its demand that the Civil Defense Coordinator report to the command center, and I noticed it was still crisp.

"What the hell is this place?" The Meathead asked as I threw the lever on the door.

"A Kilo Site." I answered.

I counted, the door took 10 seconds and looked about 18 inches thick.

"What the fuck is a Kilo Site?" Meathead, no, Donaldson asked.

"Nobody's sure." I told him. "There was an... error and the data got lost." I told him.

"Wasn't there any backups?" He asked as we started into the short hallway that curved around, and was forty steps according to my count before hitting another door. I'd noticed the curve in the hallway and the fact that it had started off at a slight angle from the door, meaning it went deeper into the mountain.

"Nobody knows." I told him. I stopped. "How long you been in?"

"1992." He told me.

"MOS?"

"Fifty-Four Bravo." He told me. A Combat Engineer. That might help, he'd know the basics of explosives, so I'd have a helper monkey if I had to wire anything up. "What about you?" He finished.

"I don't have one." I told him, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

"Everyone has..." He started, but I cut him off.

"Look, this isn't taking apart a drawdown post, this is going to be something you've never experienced." I threw the lever and kept talking. "Some of the sites I've been to covered square miles of area and were as far as five hundred feet below ground."

The door was grinding, it sounded like maybe one of the gear teeth was busted, or one of the hydraulic cylinders was blown. The door was quivering.

"Just pay attention to me, kid." I checked the chemical sensor at my waist but the LED's burned a steady green. The system repeated another demand for the Civil Defense Coordinator.

"Is it going to open?" He asked. I nodded, and there was a thunk as the system took the damaged part out of the equation and shifted to backups. The door quivered and began to raise.

From under the floor billowed a stench I was familiar with. It coated my throat, filled my nostrils, and felt like it settled on my exposed skin like a thin coat of grease.

"Back, get back." I warned, sweeping him behind me and shoving my hand under my BDU top to the small of my back.

"What the fuck is that?" He coughed, then shouted as my hand came back out with the bayonet gleaming in my fist. "Why do you have a knife?"

"Shut the fuck up." I snarled, crouching down to look under the door.

It was the smell of rotting meat and rotting blood.

The bunker should have been empty.