But it was SOP, he said, so they were ordered to carry them whenever on night guard duty.
Like the other pickets, he had been ordered to walk in a circuit outside. But Per decided that tonight it was too cold, and the snow was above his boots.
When he walked in it, he got his lower trouser legs wet, and that made it feel even colder. Just inside the open door was good enough for him. After all, 1st Sergeant Van Duyn was asleep, so he wouldn’t ever know the difference. He turned toward the desk to get another cigarette. As he flicked the lighter, he was struck at the base of his skull with a heavy ball-peen hammer. He fell on the desk and then rolled and landed on the floor. The hammer came down twice more, now on his temple.
After he was sure that the soldier was dead, Mike tucked the hammer back into his belt. It had become his favorite sentry removal tool in recent months.
The private’s rifle—a bullpup Steyr AUG with a forty-two-round magazine—was leaning up against the door molding. A thorough search of the office revealed the night vision goggles, a gray-green duffel bag, some local maps, a duty log book, rosters, and a jumble of papers and faxes written in four different languages—French, German, English, and what Mike surmised was Flemish. He also found six spare loaded thirty-round AUG magazines in an engineer’s pouch, an M17A2 gas mask, an angle-head flashlight, two spare odd looking screw-in batteries that he assumed were for the night vision goggles, a brown cardboard box of ten olive drab U.S.-made batteries that looked like D cells marked “BA-3030,” four sealed MREs, a walkie-talkie radio of a sort that he didn’t recognize, four automatic atropine injectors, a jar of Belgian instant coffee, a German-English/English-German dictionary, and half a carton of Cuban cigarettes.
Mike removed the magazine from the AUG and cleared its chamber. Then he flipped the rifle’s barrel release button and removed the barrel assembly. It was much more compact in two pieces. Mike stuffed everything but the gas mask in the duffel bag to be sorted out later.
He strapped on the duffel bag, underneath his poncho. He picked up his gun—a Remington 870 with tritium sights— waiting just outside the door along with his gloves. As he stepped outside, he could see Kevin approaching, carrying a plastic ammo can in each hand. Kevin whispered, “They are all billeted in the church building next door, all right. Their trucks are an absolute gold mine! Lisa found some cylinders marked with the skull and crossbones and ‘VX.’ That’s nerve gas, isn’t it?”
“It sure is nerve gas! Non-persistent type,” Mike replied enthusiastically. “I read about it in one of Todd’s Army manuals. It just takes a few parts per million and everyone it touches is dead in thirty seconds. A couple of tiny droplets the size of a pinhead will do the job. We certainly want to take all of those. I’m setting that as our new top priority.”
All of them but Doug left fifteen minutes later, heading southeast, carrying the gear that they had removed from the trucks. They had with them three twenty-pound VX cylinders that felt like they were filled. Their valves were secured with safety wires. Doug Carlton followed their trail in the snow and caught up a quarter hour later. They slogged on through the deep snow in silence. As they topped a high hill, they turned to look back to the north. In the distance they could see the flames of the vehicles, generator, and billets building burning.
The patrol covered nearly six miles before dawn. It started to snow again heavily, and the wind came up stronger, still from the south, drifting the snow.
It quickly obscured their tracks. As the morning light gathered, they made an abrupt turn in their direction of travel and moved a quarter mile into a dense stand of timber. They set up a new bivouac site with the tents widely spaced.
Once they were out of view of the others, Della kissed Doug, and declared, “I’m so glad that you’re alive. That was one gutsy maneuver!”
Doug replied, “Well, somebody had to do it, and there was no reason to risk more than one of us. Besides, I’m the one with the most experience in a M17 series mask.”
“Tell me how you did it,” Della implored.
Doug paused from his work erecting the Moss Little Dipper tent and answered, “Well, first I scouted out the billets. They had everything closed up tight except for one door. They had a heater of some sort running in there. I could feel the heat coming out the door, and hear its fan roaring. It made great cover noise. The door was left cracked open because they had a fat power cable from the generator leading in. I stepped well away from the building and tested the wind. It was slow and steady from the south. I cut five six-minute fuses for the grenades. One for the generator, one for each of their trucks, and one for just outside the door. The generator was in a rectangular cabinet with a flat top—how convenient for a thermite grenade.” He grinned.
He pulled the green rain fly out of the stuff sack, and continued, “As for the trucks, I opened their hoods and put the thermite grenades on top of the engine blocks, just in front of the air cleaners. Luckily, the Belgians’ rigs don’t have hood padlocks like most U.S. Army vehicles. I put the VX cylinder you set aside for me—the one that felt half-full—with its butt end poking in the door.
I taped the thermite grenade in the notch between the valve stem and the body of the cylinder, so the thermite glob would be sure to cut the end of the casing off. From what I’ve heard from Lon about compressed welding cylinders and dive tanks, it probably took off like a rocket into the building once it began to vent.
“I checked the wind again, just ’cause I’m paranoid, then I lit the fuse for the grenade on the VX cylinder. I dashed over and lit the ones on the trucks, and then the one on the generator, and I beat feet out of there. After a couple of minutes, I watched my Bulova as I ran. Just before the first of the grenades was going to start its burn, I stopped, masked, and cleared. Then I started out after you again. It’s a good thing that you folks left a clear trail in the snow.
The visibility in one of those masks is the pits, especially in low light. And, I could hardly breathe with the mask on, so I had to slow down my pace. I took it off just before I caught up with you folks. Those things feel very claustrophobic. I was really happy to take it off. For VX, I really should have been wearing a full MOPP suit, since you can absorb that stuff right through your skin. But we didn’t have one. Oh well, at least the mask would have given me a bit of protection if the wind had shifted.” Doug finished clipping on the rain fly and delivered, “It was no big deal, Dell. It was all really quite easy.” Della kissed him again.
Major Udo Kuntzler never went anywhere without his bodyguards. He had selected an American E-5 and two E-4s for the job. All three were recently Ranger school qualified. All three carried flattop M4 carbines with Trijicon ACOG scopes and MELIOS infrared laser sights. They also were each issued Beretta M9 pistols and AN/PVS-5 night vision goggles. He made sure that they were provided plenty of ammo to practice with. Kuntzler’s personal weapon was a Heckler und Koch MP-5K PDW. He never went anywhere without it, either. He jokingly referred to his bodyguards as his “praetorians.”
He called the HK PDW his “American Express Card.” He often jested, “I don’t leave home without it.”
Kuntzler was the UN adviser to the 3/2 Cavalry Brigade. He had been chosen for the job because he had both a strong grasp of tactics and good command of both spoken and written English. As the UN adviser, he was expected to go wherever the brigade went. He usually traveled in HHC-01—the headquarters company’s M3 Bradley CFV. Once in a while, he would go out to oversee individual line companies.