Cold Hatred (Book 2 & 3 of the Damned of the 2/19th) -Updated and Rewritten

Blood & Thunder

"Alfenwehr taught me the truth about the saying

'it can always get worse' because it always got

worse. But I also learned that 'buckle down

and drive on' was just as valid.

And you could drive far on rage and hatred."

2/19th Special Weapons Group Motorpool

Restricted Area, Alfenwehr West Germany

Late Winter- January, 1986

Day 11 of Repairs

Day 3 of the Second Incident

Night

We'd managed to get into the motorpool. Across the street, across the gravel strip big enough to pull a five-ton into and have people jump out of the back without ending up in the road, up the ten foot incline and then two paces to the fence, through the fence, and then across the lower motorpool where the trailers, cranes, forklifts, and dozers were kept, into the POL shack, and then to the side of the building in order to enter.

We'd lost one to the mountain already.

To Tandy.

But at least we'd made it into the dubious shelter of the motorpool bays.

He'd stopped screaming at least as we quickly slid in through the door.

King and his team moved into the bay first, then my team followed, Aine pulling up the rear and I slammed closed the door. While we all started stripping out of our cold weather gear, she opened the last Claymore bag that hung from her neck and pulled the land mine out. Right next to the door on both sides were wooden benches with empty tool rack cork boards above the benches. Usually the mechanics used it to take apart smaller parts from the vehicles, like alternators, water pumps, or even repairing wire harnesses. She set the mine underneath the bench to the left of the door, then used the extra, non-standard parts Clance shoved into any of the Claymore bags the crew prepped to create a 9 volt battery charged trigger for the mine. If someone opened the door, it would pull the thin piece of cardboard out of the clip, completing the circuit and firing off the mine.

By the time she was done with the work, using two blasting caps for redundancy instead of one, we'd all stripped down to winter BDU's and lined field jackets, black gloves instead of trigger mittens, our extreme cold weather gear folded neatly and set on the left hand bench. Aine did the same as I looked around at the dim bay.

There were a couple of lights on in the bays, providing dim lights. Some of the lights were on a separate circuit and couldn't be turned off, even at the fuse box, since it came off the junction down at the corner. A trick of the light made it look like the shadows were deepening while I was watching, the lights dimming.

A glance at Bomber got me a nod, telling me he was seeing it too.

fuck

I could see six vehicles up on lifts, two five tons and four CUC-V's. They all had extension cords running to the grills, and I knew that was to the heater/recirculators that kept the engine from freezing up. The tires were off, laying below the hubs, with the lug-nuts beside the tire. The doors were open to prevent cold damage to the seals, and I could see one of the radios in the CUC-V from where I was standing just inside the door.

perfect. Clear up here, call it in to the LT, and get orders instead of pulling ideas out my ass.

I cursed the fact that my entrance into PLDC had been delayed. Every time we had a slot for our unit I got the 'mission essential' excuse. I knew a lot of guys who felt they didn't need the school, but my older brother had attended, and told me what was taught. The training I would have gotten there might make the difference between those Soviet guys tearing us apart and us winning.