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

Part 16

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

Kincaid and Donaldson sat at the little kitchenette table facing me. We'd swept the living areas and found nothing out of place and the rest of the group had moved in. The Major had taken a spot in Officer Country like the 3 Suits, even though I'd tried to tell him he'd be better off nearer the rest of us. Kincaid had finished sketching what we'd explored on a couple of pieces of paper, Donaldson had written down his observations, and I'd added mine. While they'd moved their stuff into the lockers and made their beds I'd heated up an MRE.

It pretty much added up to the fact we didn't know jack or shit.

"You're sure this site would have some kind of purpose beyond survival, Sergeant?" Kincaid asked. I was a little blurred from having taken another dose of all the medications they'd given me, and was back to chewing on my boosters. My head was silent, and the three of us had been alone in the room for a couple hours.

I couldn't even smell the corn beef hash and brown gravy that Heather had cooked before she vanished.

"The more advanced sites do." I told him. I'd made a decision, and it was time to bring them inside.

I set my hands on the table, spreading my fingers. "OK, troops, listen up. It's crunch time and I need to know where you stand." Both of their expressions shifted, becoming more intent. "What are your clearances?"

"I've got a Confidential." Donaldson said.

"Secret." Kincaid added.

"OK, what we're looking at in here is beyond Top Secret." I waved at the room. "It requires special side clearances, periodic re-evaluation, mental health tests every few months, and all kinds of fun stuff." I looked at both of them silently for a long moment.

"If you want in, you leave the Army you've been serving in and enter the one I'm in, and you might be stuck there for the rest of your career." I told them.

"What's the difference?" Kincaid asked. Donaldson was chewing on his lower lip.

"You won't be an operator unless you later go through the schooling, but you might get tasked by SOCOM to run with them. At those times you might be referred to as 'the package' or 'support element' and the whole thing hinges on you, but you're still not an operator no matter how many runs you do. You're expected to keep yourself in a high state of physical fitness. If you have a unit, it'll be one that you see maybe 2 months out of the year." I grinned. "Most of all, nobody will believe jack shit that you've done, you won't get very many medals, and you might be called upon to kill whoever gets in your way."

"What's the weirdest thing you've seen?" Kincaid asked.

"Aside from someone fucking a Bigfoot?" I asked. Both of them looked at me like I was nuts and I grinned at them. "How about c-beams glittering off the Tannhauser Gate?"

Kincaid suddenly laughed. "Got it, Sergeant."

"If I vouch for you, you'll be re-investigated and they'll be climbing us your ass to see what you had for breakfast. Your relatives will be interviewed by FBI agents, you'll be under surveillance at odd times, and you'll be tasked for the stupidest and weirdest shit." I told them. "The biggest thing to remember, is that everything you know is wrong."

Both nodded. Kincaid looked like someone at Christmas. I locked eyes with him.

"In your Army, outside of combat, the penalty for failure is fairly light." I took off my glasses and flipped up my eyepatch. "In the Army I'm in, the penalty for failure is a little different." I put the eyepatch back and put the glasses back on.

"What went wrong and damaged your eye and the side of your face?" Donaldson asked. I stared at him for a minute until he laughed. "Got it. Questions aren't answered."

"Unless you were there." I told them. "So, you in?"

Both nodded.

"OK, as far as this site is concerned, I've got some ugly suspicions." I admitted.

"Like what?" Donaldson asked. Him and Kincaid copied me in pulling out the little green notebook.

"First of all, this place seems to have extra storage facilities. Then, we're missing about twenty people, maybe thirty." Kincaid held up his hand and wrote something down real quick on his notebook and then slid it to me.

"Is this right?" He asked.

Written on his notebook was "Camera behind you just went live and shifted" and I nodded.

"That's about right." I said. "Let's go check out command and control again."

They both nodded, and we put away our notebooks and grabbed our weapons before heading out. I'd moved a lot of the equipment from the Gypsy Wagon to the room. It was all field expendable as far as I was concerned. The only thing I'd bother grabbing if given a chance was my battered large infantry ruck.

Donaldson and Kincaid grabbed their new equipment that I'd given them a crash course in. The radiation detectors and the chemical detectors that were the easiest the use.

Instead of going straight to Operations we went to the NCOIC area first, checking the security room. It was empty. From there we jogged down to the Command Officer section and went into the Security OIC room.

It was empty, dust still undisturbed on the keyboard and on the joystick in the security monitor room.

We jogged to Operations. When we went into the egg, I caught the wiff of rotted meat, but no hint that anyone had been in there.

"What the fuck?" I asked, prowling around the monitor stations.

"Someone was using the cameras, and not from any of the stations we've found." Kincaid said. Donaldson nodded.

Upstairs had maps of the United States and Western Europe , obviously a tactical operations center. I took a quick look around and went down to the bottom and checked again. It looked undisturbed.

"You said there was parts we haven't found yet, Sergeant." Kincaid said. "Maybe a different level?"

I thought for a second. He was probably right, whoever was watching us hadn't been doing it from any of the places we'd found.

"OK, our biggest problem so far is the only maps we have are the ones we made." I told them. They nodded.

"Someone stripped them out. Maybe to deny them to someone else?" Donaldson suggested.

"That's what I've been thinking." I said, lighting a cigarette and looking around at the egg.

"OK, so what are they?" Kincaid asked.

"I don't know what they are now, but they were people." Donaldson said.

"The things that keep attacking are part of the group that is missing. I'd say no more than a dozen or so." I told them, turning away from the egg and heading out. "Thing is, remember that room full of rotting meat?"

"Ew, yeah." Kincaid said.

"They either took it from the civilian freezers, or from somewhere else." I said. "The freezers in this section are empty and the inventory sheets show they were never filled."

"Could they have brought them from outside?" Donaldson asked.

"Then that shows we've got another problem." I told them. "Guess."

"There's an access point open." Donaldson said. He sounded less than pleased. I agreed with the sentiment.

"Which means the main storage freezers for this section are on another level." Kincaid offered. I nodded.

"OK, let's search for an elevator or stairwell." I told them. "Kincaid, you map it as we go, I don't want to get lost in here." Kincaid nodded and pulled the small yellow spiral notebook out of his cargo pocket.

"I thought we were going to avoid elevators." Donaldson said as we left the egg.

"You're about to find out a secret." I told them. "It's in some of the high security sites, and should be here."

We moved through the cold and empty hallways. Most of the lights either gave out in a shower of sparks or didn't come on at all, meaning that a lot times the hallway was completely dark except for our flashlights.

"Wait." I said, holding up my hand. "I wanna check this, I've never seen this before."

The door next to us had "EVENT RECOVERY SECTION" on it. It had a keypad and a lever as well as a card reader. Unlike the heavy steel doors of the section, this one was an obvious blast door, not just a normal door made thicker and heavier.

I punched in my number and waited a second.