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

Blood for Lugus

2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
30 October, 1987
0700 Hours

The sun had risen after I had left the barracks.

I knew what was going to happen next. I didn't need any fancy sat-com bullshit to get orders, to get warnings. I knew what the next play was. Of the mountain, of life. It was the next play, that didn't require my survival to ensure maximum bloodshed. The most amount of blood for the minimum effort was the mountain's goal.

The snow was sparkling and I was glad I had made sure to keep the polarized overlay for my goggles. It brought the glare of the sun down to a reasonable level. Made sure my one remaining eye wasn't blinded.

I'd taken the time to set things up, get ready for what I knew was going to happen now.

The cigarette tasted good, the nicotine moving through my bloodstream to help ease the pain of the injuries I'd taken that hadn't quite healed.

My leg was going to require surgery to rebuild it. It was in worse condition than my shoulder, even though my shoulder had taken a gunshot wound recently. I was pretty sure that my thigh was fractured, probably along the length. God knew I shouldn't even have a leg, that I was goddamn lucky it was just bone damage instead of it being severed at mid-thigh.

Still, I was alive, and that was more than could be said for a lot of other people.

I sighed, popping the last of the chocolate covered brownie into my mouth and stuffing the foil wrapper into my pocket.

I could hear low voices now.

They were almost here.

I'd positioned myself in a  bottleneck. The ridges came to a point right there, making an opening only six feet wide, the first flat spot in nearly six hundred feet. From here AWOL Trail was only about three hundred meters out, but I'd laid Claymores at the head of it. Anyone coming up it would run into them.

I'd laid over a dozen traps along the trail.

I knew Henley, knew SOG, and understood Rangers. There was no way any Ranger commander who gave a shit about his men would send them up AWOL Trail with the slightest chance that I was still running around.

Mining AWOL Trail was part of 2/19th METL. It was part of our pre-conflict orders. Any Ranger team leader would know that I would mine the ever loving shit out of it.

Just to be an asshole I'd mixed chlorine, bleach, and sulfuric acid into half gallon bottles and set them in front of the Claymores.

Enjoy that.

I could hear someone grunting, heard the sound of a hammer on a piton, then the sharp whir of a climbing cord being threaded.

My guests were almost here.

...terminate with extreme prejudice...

I watched as the snow covered glove came up over the edge, holding a climbing pick, then grinned as the person wielding it pulled themselves up and over the edge.

His eyes widened when he saw me sitting there in the snow, on top of my extreme cold weather poncho, the M-14 battle rifle in my hands.

"Why hello there," I said brightly. He opened his mouth and I hurried up. "Get all the way up here, then call down to them to hold position."

The guy nodded slowly, keeping his hands in view.

Hold position. The Americans were waiting for us, he said in Russian. The fact that I'd learned Russian from Bomber over the last few years wasn't in any files, so I knew he didn't know I knew it.