Radioman (A 2/19th Spinoff) - Complete

In the Dark

The radio was largely quiet. Just idle chatter picked up here and there. I had the frequency agile channel scanner on tonight, listening to everyone's conversations as the frequency agile hardware scanned multiple bands and tricked onto the strongest one.

Someone from 1/68th Armor Battalion was doing radio checks from downrange. Another unit using the callsign "Oscar Five Epsilon" in Wildflicken checking the guards in the foxholes. Someone else out at something called "Forward Observation Delta Nine Sigma" was using cryptography gear that the big decryption hardware DARPA had brought in and taught me to use was translating for me, but it was a boring conversation full of random words and phrases. I'd set up the gear to record all the chatter off of that channel so I could turn in the recording to III CosCom Military Intelligence. Another channel had a woman who would pop up, recite eight single-digit numbers, then go silent for sixty to ninety seconds. The last channel was out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and was some guy with a heavy Canadian accent ranting and raving about how the Canadian government was plotting to kill everyone in the whole world.

In other words, another boring night for a radioman in West Germany.

I couldn't sleep. The pain in the side of my face was overwhelming the painkillers that were slowly being processing out of my system. I'd only taken them two hours ago, I couldn't take another one for an hour or so.

But I was used to pain. I just let it trickle into the emptiness inside my chest, where it slowly leaked away into nothing.

The fact that when I closed my eyes I relived what happened earlier in the week sure wasn't helping me. I was tired, my eyes scratchy and dry feeling, but any time I tried to blink I ended up not opening my eyes, and it all swarmed back to me.

Glancing in the rear view mirror just in time to see the lightning hit the ground. Then the sudden flash. The oncoming wave of dust and debris. Then the truck was airborne. It flipped twice in mid-air, slammed down on the road, the windows shattering as the earth-shattering sound of the explosion rolled over the still running vehicle, then the secondary blast wave caught it, flipped it again, and bounced it across the blast ditch.

All of it in slow motion. Then it replayed again. SFC Mattrell taking off his helmet and bending over to set it on the floorboards of the truck. I glanced back, and again, everything slowed down. The blast wave was raising dirt from behind me, and I could see the blast wave coming.

None of the three men in the back had a chance to even know what was coming as the blast wave hit us moving faster than the speed of sound. Sergeant First Class Mattrell didn't even get a chance to scream. On the first flip he hit the dashboard badly, and I saw his neck go.

When the truck slammed down the final time, the window frame denting on the door as side of my face rammed into it. Consciousness vanished. When it returned, Nancy's dirty and tear streaked face was staring at me, her lips moving, the world silent around me, only my right eye working and everything blurry.

With a jerk I woke back up. I opened my eyes and stared at the dimly lit ceiling of the Commo Room. My domain. Just as much my space as Stillwater's office was his. People didn't come in here, except for my assistant. Full of cutting edge cryptography and communications gear.

Most of it useless now that the satellite links had been destroyed in the blast.

Sleep wasn't going to come anytime soon. It hadn't since the blast had destroyed the entire goddamn site and killed almost everyone I knew.

I kept coming back to the blast. Like I was still in mid-air.

There was a knock on the door of the Commo Room, three quick, sharp raps. It opened as I looked over to see who wanted in. It could be that weirdo CIA guy running the operation, it could have been someone from 1/68th Armor. The whole site right now was nothing more than some weird CIA psy-op as far as I could tell.