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

Part 17

Site Kilo-29
Military Area - Living Quarters
Winter, 1993
Day Two-Evening

I stood there, staring at the hole in the vent and the two molten yellow eyes glaring at me from the darkness. The hiss echoed through the shaft, rebounding and twisting, the echoes increasing and making it sound as if the entire thing was full of angry snakes.

I heard my own voice echoing in the stairwell, but didn't remember saying anything.

"What?" Donaldson said, looking up to see what I was looking at.

Kincaid didn't fuck around.

His rifle came up to his shoulder, his eyes narrowing, and he pulled the trigger as soon as the vent came into his sight picture, the weapon's fire doubling and redoubling in the shaft until the very air vibrated and shimmered. I was still standing and staring at the hole as holes started to get punched into the metal, leading toward the torn open hole.

Nancy, heather, and Taggart were embracing on the thick PVP pipe holding wires and cables, and I ignored them squirming around, knowing I was starting to grin.

"Kill it kill it kill it kill it!" Donaldson was yelling.

Kincaid's lips were drawn back in a snarl, and I could see the brass fly out individually.The brass ejected from Kincaid's rifle to fall to the steel grate, dancing on the metal before dropping through the slats.

He was yanking the trigger back, not on full auto, his eyes squinted mostly shut. Kincaid walked the rounds down the duct the direction of the faint flash of movement.

Donaldson turned to look at me, his eyes opening wide. I was trying to ignore the way Nancy was draped across him, one arm around his waist, the other arm around his chest with her hand in his BDU top, grinning at me over his shoulder.

Something hissed in the vent, the eyes narrowing, and whatever it was Kincaid hadn't walked his fire into it.

Three trigger pulls from my Glock on the hand punched right through the opening. One eye went out, and there was an ear splitting yowl that overwhelmed the thunder of the M16 in the stairwell shaft. The ductwork shivered and something banged over to our left.

I turned and fired, not where the nose was coming from and the thumps were coming from the heavy steel ductwork, but right in front of them. Kincaid was shooting where the thumps were coming from, his lip curled back in a snarl.

The yowl cut off.

The stairs were still shuddering from the hammering of the M16A1, the air still shimmering. Dust was falling from the asbestos, coating us in a whitish yellow powder. Something gave out with a loud "PANG!" and I could hear it ricochet around for a moment while I stared at the other two men. Something in the ducts rattled and banged as it dropped down the shaft of steel ductwork.

"Sergeant!" Donaldson yelled. Nancy grinned at me over his shoulder then kissed his neck before running her tongue from his collarbone up behind his ear.

...you don't have the balls to shoot me, Ant, you ain't no killer...

...Nancy kneeling in front of him, bleeding from a wound across her forehead with his .45 pressed against the back of her head, kneeling in the grass with blood running down her face and dripping on her breasts which were exposed by a long tear in her shirt...

..the .45 in my hand, the hand I couldn't feel that blood dripped off of onto the grass from where the bone in my forearm had torn through the skin...

"Sergeant!" Donaldson was still yelling, Kincaid was dropping his rifle down, turning toward me. Nancy was still smiling even as the blood dripped out of the clean slice down the side of her face that curved right at her jaw-line where the bayonet had slid down her skull before slamming into the top of her breast. The tip of her nose was black and the skin on her cheeks was peeling.

"Sergeant!" Donaldson yelled.

"It's gone." I told him, my mouth thick and feeling like it was full of gummy cotton.

"What the fuck was that?" Donaldson asked. Kincaid didn't say anything, just quickly reloading his rifle and putting the magazine upside down back in his ammo pouch.

"The enemy." I told him. Nancy licked up the back of his neck.

"But who.." Donaldson said.

"The enemy, Private." I told him, moving past him and thumping my shoulder against his. "Let's not get sidetracked."

"The camera." Kincaid grunted.

"Bingo." I said, walking out into the hallway.

"What was down there?" Donaldson asked.

"Not sure. But we're looking at something serious in here." I told him, walking down the hallway. My leg brace was creaking with every step.

...the white wave swept over the motorpool, slamming into the barracks and causing the whole structure the vibrate and creak...

...aaaaand we're stuck in the barracks again. So much for convalescent leave...

...the weight bench creaking as we each took a turn pumping iron, strengthening damaged muscle and bone that had just started to heal in Nebraska only a week before...

"Where are we going?" Donaldson asked. Kincaid was silent beside me, his eyes scanning the ceiling and darting a look behind every once in a while.

the 2/19th stare

"I wanna find out who's playing with goddamn cameras." I told him.

We weren't that far from Operations, but instead of running them straight to the main access corridor, I led them in a looping path until we were back by Auxiliary Environmental, opening the door to the secondary air scrubbers and leading them into the room. Once we were among the heavy air pumps I stopped.

"Check this out." I told them, digging in my pocket and pulling out the dogtag I'd pocketed earlier.

"What the hell is this?" Kincaid asked, passing it to Donaldson.

"Russian." Donaldson said after one glance.

...no shit...

..hush, Taggart...

"How do you know?" Kincaid asked. I just grinned again.

"CCCP was what they used, it stood for Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialistichestikh Respublic since in Cyrillic 'C' is used for the 'S' sound." Donaldson said, turning the dogtag over in his hand. I was impressed, it even sounded like he pronounced it right. "Thing is, this one looks a little weird."

...he's KGB, kill him now...

...quiet, Bomber...

"That's impressive, Private." I said, dropping back so he was on my left and holding out my left hand, making it look like I was leaning against a huge air circulater. He put the dogtag in it. "How do you know that?"

"I'm not some dumbass Private, Sergeant, even though I was home schooled." He answered. "My father was a big communism supporter and thought the Soviet Union was God's gift to the Earth." His face twisted for a second. "It cost me my goddamn clearance so I got booted from MI in AIT. Him and his stupid bullshit and goddamn collection of 'authentic' Soviet shit."

I nodded and took a couple of steps forward, not worrying about him standing behind me anymore. Well, not too much, I didn't really like anyone behind me any more. Not since 2/19th. Still, an expression like that, with the hard angry glint in his eyes, was tough to just pull out of thin air like that. Still, the Cold War was over and it wasn't like he looked Chinese, and that was who we had to worry about now.

"What else do you know, Private?" I asked him, leaning against a big machine who's whole purpose was to pull the air through and running it past a handful of filters and some kind of ionizing particle attractor. I only half understood it, but then my job was just to...

Shit, I didn't even know what my job was any more.

"You think this place was refurbished in the mid-80's, right?" I nodded. "Well, what the hell would a Russian dogtag be doing in here? Maybe a souvenir?"

"Yeah, maybe someone had it in their pocket as a souvenir." Kincaid said.

I shook my head. "No."

"Why not?" Kincaid asked.

"That's a real Soviet tag." I told them, pulling out one of the dogtags I'd taken and holding them both in my hand. "Notice the difference in the size, shape, and metal? This isn't a fake." I tucked them both into my pocket. "So, if it isn't a souvenir and it isn't a fake, why is it here?"

"I don't know." Donaldson admitted. "What do you think?"

"Kincaid?"

"If you'd have asked me before I'd seen this place, I wouldn't have thought this." Kincaid started. "What would happen if Russian troops were caught on American soil poking around?"

"It was the Cold War, they'd be held over for espionage and then traded if the Soviets grabbed a SOCOM team doing dirty deeds somewhere in the Warsaw Pact." I told him, nodding. "The dogtags are important, they identify us as combatants, so they'd have to treat us like soldiers and not spies."

"Seriously?" Donaldson asked.

"Seriously." I nodded. "Rumor control had it that it happened all the damn time, and you heard now and then at the back of the NCO Club after-mission bragging that you tell yourself is bullshit but there's a just maybe."

"If I heard the enemy was building places like this, I'd send in the Special Forces to sneak around and check it out." Kincaid said. "But that's some shit out of spy movies, not real life."

I chuckled and pulled out my pack of cigarettes, ignoring Nagle doing a strip tease on top of an air cooler. "You know who 007 is, right?"

Both nodded.

"They might as well called it: My Life With MI-6 by Ian Fleming." I told them, citing a pretty common rumor. "The books are a hell of a lot different from the movie, and the best way to hide real life ops is behind fiction."

Kincaid opened his mouth, then closed it again. I nodded to him. "Yeah, the Cold War looked a lot different standing in the Fulda Gap or on the 1K Zone than it did sitting in California or New York and watching it on fucking TV."

...Stoke's hands going to her abdomen as she grunted sharply. As the sound of the gunshot from the 1K Zone rolled over us, her hands came away covered in blood and she went to her knees with a surprised look...

...my hand cupping his chin, knee in the small of his back, bowing him backwards, then slitting his throat before dropping him and standing up. Staring East and smiling, daring them to hit me too, wanting them to try for me. Bomber was standing up, his twitching in the grass with a broken neck. My brother was behind me, back in West Germany, helping Nancy keep Stokes alive till the medevac came in...

"There's only two ways this got here." Kincaid said. "Either it was in someone's pocket for some reason." He sighed and looked around, then rapped his knuckles on huge machinery he was leaning on. "Or some Russain agents got in here checking it out." He paused for a second.

"And never got out." I finished for him, then bounced the back of my head twice off the heavy metal behind me. Nagle vanished after the first bounce. "We need to ask why. The Soviets wouldn't have sent some bunch of suckasses, and despite the 'Chair Force' bullshit, the Air Force ain't the type to just lay down and die."

"You think they all got killed?" Kincaid asked.

"I think we'd be better off if they'd all gotten killed." I told them, pulling out my knife and sniffing along the edge. "It doesn't smell right, for one." I sheathed it. "So we're missing two engineer teams, one or more Air Force teams, and possibly a Spetz team. Say... 30 of them left."

"What do you think happened?" Donaldson asked.

"That doesn't matter." I told him, giving him my best ANCOC stare. "During the fight you don't ask why they're the enemy, you ask how you can beat them."

Both of them nodded.

"So, we've got about a platoon strength of the enemy, with limited weaponry, but their on their home terrain. They'll try hit and run tactics, try to catch us one on one, and use ambushes. We've got weapons, NVG's, and are in better physical condition." I said, ticking off each point on my fingers.

"Wait, you think what's been attacking us are people?" Kincaid looked a little surprised and I just stared at him.

"OK, Kincaid, let me catch you up. I killed one in the motorpool, it was human, they've jumped me a couple times, they are or were human." I knew I was laying on the sarcasm, but the question surprised and offended me. "That doesn't matter. They're the enemy, that is all. that. matters."

Kincaid shut his mouth.

...downward stab, through the third and fourth rib...

...I know, Father...

"But we've got more problems that a platoon element of the enemy." I told them.

"Like what? Donaldson asked.

"I know why I'm here. I know why you guys are here." I told them. "You know too, right?" Both of them nodded. "OK, why the fuck would one of the alphabet groups send three motherfuckers with us?"

The two Privates looked at each other then shrugged.

"Bingo, we've got three fucking alphabet boys in here with us, and I've got no idea why they're here." I shook my head. "And there's one thing you need to know, now that you're in this with me."

"What?" Donaldson asked.

"Anything new, anything you can't explain, anything different, is dangerous. And anything dangerous is the enemy."

Donaldson nodded. Kincaid's hand went to his M16A1 then he nodded.

"So we're stuck in here with 30 people who obviously want to kill us, and three guys who might have orders to kill us, right?" Donaldson said.

"That pretty much sums it up." I told them.

"And someone's using the cameras." Kincaid added. "Is that why we're standing in here?"

I nodded, when he opened his mouth I held my hand up. "I'm thinking." I told him, banging my head twice more on the metal behind me. I looked up and stared at the metal ceiling. It was about two feet higher than the hallway ceiling.

Kincaid said something but I held up two fingers, still staring at the ceiling. It was fitted steel into a lattice framework, and for some reason my brain was counting the steel plates.

Twenty five plates on one side, forty on the other, each plate with three feet on each side, for a total of one thousand plates even and a total of nine thousand square feet in this room. Each railing looked about four inches wide, for an extra six feet on one side and twelve feet on the other. The plates had a triangle wedge about three inch per side, with two 1/2" bolt heads holding each of them in place.

My head was running the numbers, multiplying up the bolts and everything else when I noticed that some of the plates were missing bolt heads but instead steel lugnuts with silicon on them..

"What are you..." Donaldson started, I held up my hand, scanning the plates.

One over each door, one on my right. The other one was dead center.

And missing the bolts.

"Sergeant?" Kincaid asked. I held up my hand again.

...think too long, you're wrong, brother...

...on line, on time, Bomber...

"I think that I'm starting to figure a few things out." I said, suddenly pushing myself off.

"What did you figure out?" Donaldson asked.

"We need to go on the offensive." I told them. "First thing is, we find out where the cameras are being used from, then we figure out who was using it, then we hold off whoever the fucking enemy is until we can get the fuck out of here." I threw the locking lever on the door.

It rose up nice smoothly for a change.

"We're going to try the elevators." I told them, heading for one of the offices.

"I thought you said they were dangerous." Donaldson looked at me. "And what did you figure out?"

"Ever seen Aliens?" I asked.

"No." Donaldson said.

"Dude, seriously?" Kincaid asked. "You've never seen Aliens?"

"No, we didn't watch TV." Donaldson told us. "No movies or TV shows or any of that shit, my dad said it was just pro-government propaganda."

"Shit, I can't believe you've never seen Aliens." Kincaid laughed.

"Just help me out." I told them, opening the door to one of the offices. "Help me carry this desk to the elevators."

Kincaid kept teasing Donaldson the whole way while we dragged the desk all the way to the elevators. The scrape set my non-existent teeth on edge at times. We paused so I could hand off one end to Kincaid.

When they moved in front of me I rolled my shoulder to pop it back into place, popping one of my pills into my mouth and chewing it into paste.

"Ready to do the elevator check?" I asked. They both nodded. I waved Donaldson to one side, Kincaid to the other, then drew my knife and pressed the button with the point.

There was a large groaning noise that made the air shiver, then popping noises.

"Mind if I ask a question, Sergeant?" Kincaid asked.

"GA." I told him, watching the doors. he didn't turn his attention to me.

There were more popping noises.

"Why does it seem that your first instinct is to go for your knife?"

"Habit." I told him.

...The knife looped out, around his neck, and I grabbed the top of his parka, pulling his head backwards, and the Gerber, a birthday gift from my brother, sliced around the front of his neck, biting deep and catching on something for a moment...

"Why don't you like the rifle?" Kincaid tapped the fingers of his left hand on the handguards of his rifle.

"I suck with a rifle. I'm better with a pistol or my knife." I admitted. "I'm good with the rifle in combat, but I suck at the range, so I don't trust my aim."

There was a cracking noise, and a long scraping noise echoed through the hallway.

"Why don't you practice more?" Donaldson asked. I chuckled and shook my head, still keeping eyes on the elevator.

"Stay on the stick." I told them. I rolled my shoulders, ignoring the little spike of pain that almost took my breath away. The shoulder had been repeatedly injured. Stab wound, broken collarbone, broken bone at the top of the biceps, shrapnel, and worse. I'd spent 2 months with my right arm paralyzed below the shoulder.

I'd worn a sling and was deployed to do as I was told and shut the hell up.

I'd told one doctor about the way it felt, how it felt some days like there was an icicle stuck in it. How sometimes I'd wake up and there would be a purple bruise in the center and I'd be shivering and shaking, freezing cold.

He'd written me a consult to Mental Health and lectured me about psychosomatic symptoms. Heather had detached the baby, put her boob away, lowered her shirt, then stood up, taken my left hand to gently pull me to my feet, and politely suggested that the Doctor kindly take a flying leap up his own ass in a clown suit.

There was another shuddering noise that hurt the ears, then a metallic thump. The doors shuddered and squealed, shaking in their tracks.

"Get ready." Kincaid's voice was a growl.

The doors opened, and Donaldson popped a shot into the far side of the empty elevator car.

"Nice shooting, Tex." Kincaid said, stepping forward.

"Wait a minute." I told them, then counted to twenty.

Nothing happened and I breathed a silent sigh of relief. I checked the sides of the elevator looking for rust. There were no rust or lime on the walls, and a quick glance showed that the escape hatch had a slight bit of asbestos showing along the edge. it was ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep with another door on the far side.

"Let's shove it in. Don't walk in there yet." I told them.

It squealed, hung up for a second, then slid in.

There was a snapping noise and then a metallic groan.

And the whole floor dropped away, Kincaid stumbling forward as the desk dropped into the suddenly revealed gulf.

A quick grab got a hold on the back strap of Kincaid's LBE and I snatched him back. "I gotcha, Private." I told him as he yelled and windmilled his arms.

"Holy shit." He said, pressing himself against the wall when I let go. "Holy shit holy shit holy shit."

"Yeah, that's why I wanted to do this." I told him.

"Let's do it again." I told them.

The next one held steady, and we piled three more in before I had Kincaid hold my LBE belt while I leaned in and punched a button at the bottom marked "EL1" and then had Kincaid yank me back.

We stood there waiting while the elevator screamed and groaned, the sounds seeming to get louder as the elevator went down into the mountain. The sounds stopped after nearly 10 minutes.

"Jesus, it's a long way down." Donaldson said.

"Shut it, incoming." I said, tilting my head to the right to indicate down the hallway.

Down the hallway was walking the Major, the Suits, and three of the Major's little minions.

"Sergeant Ant, what the hell is going on?" The Major yelled.

I reached out and tapped the button and the hallway filled with a loud popping noise and the scream of metal on metal.

The Major looked pissed as I put a hand to my ear and mouthed 'what?' at him. He said something that I couldn't make out. He kept coming forward, still talking, but I couldn't make it out over the racket.

Someone had never bellowed out commands to his men over the hammer of rifle fire and the hammering of mortar fire and I had to restrain a sneer.

...he's working with the Suits, kill all of them now...

Nancy was leaning next to the elevator doors, rough stitches holding the long slash on her face together. She had frostbite on her earlobes and the tip of her nose. She blew me a kiss as I rattled another pill into my mouth and started chewing it.

"Was that gunfire we heard?" The Major hollered over the sound of the elevator drawing nearer.

"Enemy contact, sir." I told him.

"What enemy, Sergeant?"

Toothpick smirked and a cold trickle washed down my spine.

...you're going to end up killing him, bunny...

...I know, Heather...

...I'll still love you, bunny...

...thank you...

My vision sharpened and the heaviness went out of my muscles. I could feel the oxygen flooding through my body, the muzziness leaving my thought process and everything coming into sharp focus around me.

Toothpick's friends looked eager, hungry almost.

"The things that attacked Sergeant Ant, sir." Kincaid offered.

"Who gave you permission to shoot, Private?" The Major asked.

"Sergeant Ant is well known for exceeding his authority." Toothpick offered. "He seems to think that he's exempt from the rules."

"Kind of like you spook motherfuckers?" I asked, smiling widely.

The Suit on the left shuddered and doubt appeared in his eyes.

"What the hell are you doing that's making all that goddamn racket?" The major asked. The last half of what he was yelling was loud in the sudden silence as the elevator came to a halt.

He flushed, then opened his mouth to continue when the doors started shuddering and groaning.

"Back on the stick, gentlemen." I pitched my voice loud enough to be heard.

"What the fuck is going on here?" The Major yelled.

The doors opened up to reveal the four desks we'd put in the elevator, and nothing else.

"Sergeant Ant!" The Major yelled, pulling all our eyes back to him.

Toothpick was grinning, stepping up, with a pair of handcuffs in his hands. His two little butt buddies were right behind him. The Major's three minions looked a little confused and I wrote them off as non-entities, tracking them with my periphery rather than pay close attention to them. If they got frisky I'd upgrade and handle them.

"Sergeant Ant, you need to relinquish your gun and knife." Toothpick told me.

"They're called weapons, dumbass, unless you want my cock." I told him, he flushed and stepped up next to the Major.

There was a clatter of metal in the elevator, but everyone was watching me, the Major, and the Suits.

"We can do this easy or hard, Sergeant Ant." Toothpick said.

Two of the lights exploded over our heads, and the whole hallway plunged into darkness, lit only by the lights from the elevator.

That's when they swarmed out of the elevator and hit us.