65 Below

by Basil Sands

  They drove forty miles to the city of Seoul and found the Blessed Angels Catholic Orphanage in the midst of the bustling metropolis along the banks of the Han River. When the Wyatts entered the courtyard, the children all stopped what they were doing and stared at the white-skinned, round-eyed Migook who walked past them. Looks of hope sparked on some of their faces, while others seemed to know that once again, they would be passed up. They turned away and sullenly continued their games. Eugene and Leslie had initially, like most couples, wanted a baby.

  Six-year-old Sukmi sat alone on the concrete steps that led to the massive, dark wooden front door of the stone-and-timber-frame three-story building. The little girl had a single, thickly woven braid of long, black hair hanging down to the middle of her back. She looked up at the kind faces of the man and woman who approached. Her eyes were filled with the pain of a life broken, of hope nearly crushed. As they approached, Sukmi’s pleading gaze captivated both Eugene and Leslie as if her fragile soul cried out from within the tiny body, begging to be redeemed from the misery her life had become.

  Eugene was immediately overwhelmed with compassion for the pretty little girl. Inside the building, he asked the nun who spoke with them about the girl on the steps. Once they heard her story, he and Leslie agreed that if she was willing to come with them, they wanted to give her a new home. The girl was brought in to meet them, and although they were not able to communicate with more than hand gestures and Eugene’s minimal, broken Korean, hope again sparked in her eyes as Sukmi realized that this Migook couple really seemed to care, that they truly wanted to rescue her.

  Over the course of a month, the paperwork was done, the fees paid and cute little Sukmi officially became their daughter. Six months later, the Army moved them to Fort Wainright in Fairbanks, Alaska. The American name “Lonnie” was chosen because it was easy to spell and say in both English and Korean. Sukmi thought it was pretty. She told her new parents that the name “sounded like flowers and sunshine” to her.

  The Wyatts liked Fairbanks, a small city of about thirty thousand at the time. Eugene and his wife were originally from Oklahoma. However, when they got out of the Army, the couple decided to stay where they were. He got a job as a lineman with Tanana Valley Electrical Cooperative. They settled into a new home in the Graehl neighborhood on the east side of Fairbanks.

  Lonnie’s childhood in Alaska was peaceful and comfortable. Her parents had decided that she should not lose the knowledge of her Korean heritage, so they joined a small Korean Presbyterian church located near their home and made sure she was tutored in her native language and culture. By the time she was an adult, she had retained natively fluent Korean and unaccented English and moved easily both in Korean and American social circles.

  She met Marcus during a cross-country track meet at Lathrop High School in 1984. Lonnie was a contender for the All Alaska title in the girls’ 5K event. Marcus was the current state champion in the boys’ 10K. He had clean, golden-brown skin topped by a thick layer of wavy black hair closely cropped on the sides and combed back over his head. His features, a gentle mixture of black and Athabaskan native, gave him an appearance that was at once strong and tender. Throughout the race that first day, she could not take her eyes off him. He noticed her constant glances and reciprocated in like manner.

  They dated all through the rest of high school until he joined the Marines after graduation in 1986. While in college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she majored in mathematics, Lonnie waited for him to finish his six-year commitment and come home. She envisioned them getting married and settling down to a normal Alaskan life of enjoying the great outdoors, having children, and taking an occasional trip to some remote tropical island in mid-winter.

  Marcus constantly wrote romantic letters and postcards to her from wherever he was stationed. He often penned beautiful poems for her. Those were her favorite part of his writings. He had the ability to explain his thoughts in ways more real than she understood her own feelings. Every time he wrote to her, she felt as if she was looking into his soul. She wished she had the same ability. Her strength lay not in poetry, though, but in the analytical thinking of math and hard sciences.

  Several times, Marcus sent her money to fly down to see him wherever he was stationed, and once even brought her to Europe, to take part in Linus and Cara’s wedding in Norway. It was there that he asked her to marry him. Lonnie had thought about it during the previous years. She knew that eventually he would ask. She had worked over her response many times. Her answer came with a stipulation. It sounded logical to her. His love for her would be proven by his willingness to submit to this one simple request.

  Lonnie knew Marcus would be a good husband, but the idea of sharing him with a job that constantly called him to distant places and faraway lands did not fit her vision of a happy couple. That their marriage could suddenly end with a chaplain knocking on the door to inform the young wife of the sad news of her husband’s heroic death was more than she thought she could handle. If he would leave the Marines, she would accept. From the moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them.

  He told her he understood, but hoped she would change her mind. He could not leave the Corps. It had become his identity. He was a “poster Marine,” the model of a compassionate warrior recruiters used to draw new men into their brotherhood. Lonnie continued to write to him and he wrote back. As time went on, the romantic allusions in his letters gradually disappeared.

  Lonnie graduated from UAF and became a math teacher at the school where she and Marcus had met. As she taught, she became increasingly distressed by the problem of drugs and crime that was growing among the teenagers of the region. When a tragic accident involving drugs took the life of one of her favorite students, Lonnie’s heart prompted her to become more pro-active in stemming the tide of moral decline she observed. She joined the State Troopers in 1996. In her new job, Lonnie discovered what it was that Marcus saw in the Marines, a life not unlike that of a trooper.

  While Marcus was in England on a tour with the Royal Marines, she wrote and explained her new understanding. Her heart leaped with joy when she received his response that let her know he still loved her and looked forward to seeing her again. Marcus told her he was leaving on a peacekeeping mission to Africa. They would talk about it when he got back.

  Marcus disappeared in Sierra Leone. He was reported as missing and presumed killed in action. The story was in all the papers. Local hero gives his life defending an orphanage ravaged by guerillas. While his hometown mourned the loss of Marcus Johnson, Lonnie Wyatt mourned the loss of her soul.

  Jerry entered her life a month after she heard of Marcus’s death. They met in a bar and fell into a fast-moving relationship as she tried to escape the gnawing pain of her loss. Lonnie got pregnant, and a short time later, they were married with little ceremony by a justice of the peace. Jerry was no Marcus, but he was moderately handsome and was willing to take responsibility for their child.

  Four months later, Lonnie learned that Marcus had escaped, and was alive. When he wrote the promised letter full of hope and vowing to keep himself for her alone, she was devastated. Lonnie wept for days. She did not tell Jerry why. He assumed it was a hormonal thing with the pregnancy.

  The baby miscarried the week after receiving the letter. In time, so did the marriage. Trooper work was too demanding. Especially when the wife is the trooper and the husband works a nine-to-five cubicle job on the military base, surrounded by pretty young women feeling their first years of freedom from their parents.

  Lonnie discovered that Jerry had been having an affair with a nineteen-year-old Air Force office clerk named Tonya for more than a year. The girl had been fresh at the base and only two months past her eighteenth birthday when they met. By the time they ran away together, he was thirty-five and she was still not legally allowed to drink alcohol. Jerry didn’t even bother to leave a note. Instead, Tonya text-messaged Lonnie after they had crossed the border into Canada to
say that she could keep all of her soon-to-be ex-husband’s stuff.

  Lonnie was glad to see him go. Jerry, as the years revealed, was a conceited, self-absorbed whiner. He was exactly nothing like Marcus, who still appeared in her dreams and walked into her thoughts at random. She was still in love with her Marine.

  The sound of the frozen pavement rumbled under the tires of her cruiser as she drove down the highway toward Salt Jacket and the dreaded reunion.

  “How am I going to talk to him?” she muttered to herself.

  She would first check out the witnesses at the pump station on Johnson Road. The glow of the pipeline’s security lights shimmered in the distance through the tops of the spruce trees that hid the pump station buildings from view. Three massive five-ton concrete barriers were placed in a pattern twenty yards in front of the gate. Drivers were forced to zigzag through the obstacles in order to reach the gate. Moving through the barriers, she lowered the window of her cruiser. A uniformed security officer stepped from the guardhouse, an MP5 submachine gun slung around his shoulder. One hand rested on the pistol grip of the weapon as he held the other out, signaling her to stop.

  “Good evening, ma’am. How can I help you?”

  The guard spoke with a hint of caution in his voice as he eyed her over, peering into the cruiser as if to verify it was real.

  “I’m Trooper Wyatt. I need to talk to Officer Bannock about some men he saw back at the TVEC substation a few hours ago.” She handed him her AST ID card to verify who she was.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he replied as he took the card from her hand and studied it in the light. He wrote down her name and badge number on a piece of paper attached to a clipboard. Anyone could get a badge and uniform made up, and maybe even steal a police cruiser. The pipeline was one of the nation’s most valuable assets. Terrorism was not just something they heard about on TV. It was a real threat to these guards. They double-checked everything and everyone. He handed the card back and pointed into the gated compound.

  “Over there is the watch room. Bannock is on duty at the cameras right now. I’ll phone ahead and let him know you’re coming.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  The officer stepped back to the guard shack, and the electric motor of the chain-linked gate slowly pulled the barrier open. Once it was wide enough, Lonnie snaked her cruiser through a couple more concrete barriers squatting silently inside the fence. She made her way over fifty yards of open area to the small, corrugated metal building the gate guard had pointed out.

  Trooper Wyatt opened the door and rose from her cruiser into the cold evening air. Her left hand habitually adjusted the flashlight and nightstick in her utility belt as she straightened. Lonnie’s right hand rested briefly on the butt of her pistol as she scanned the surrounding area. Starting from the guardhouse to the left and behind her, her eyes ran over everything she could see until they came to rest on the door of the building nearby. She turned from the vehicle and pressed the record button on the small digital recorder kept in the right breast pocket of her parka. She always recorded investigative interviews.

  As she pushed the car door shut, a figure appeared in the entry of the building. Bright light from inside silhouetted the shape in dark shadow. The man appeared massive and intimidating. As he stepped forward onto the landing, his features came into view . At first they were hard, tough looking but suddenly softened and Lonnie could see a smile come across the big man’s face as she approached. He was in his early forties, stood about six feet tall, and sported a military style crew cut and a very muscular physique. His arms bulged at the seams of the blue uniform shirt. The protective vest the security officer wore strained against his thick pectorals. Lonnie thought the guy must spend every spare minute of his time lifting weights.

  “Well, now,” said the officer in a flirtatious voice, holding the door open for her, “if I’m going to be interrogated by a trooper, you are probably the one who will get all the information out of me.” He chuckled at his own words.

  “Are you Bannock?” Trooper Wyatt asked.

  “Officer Charlie Bannock, Doyon Security Services, at your service, ma’am,” he said with a flourish of his hand, ushering her into the lighted building. “And you are?”

  “Trooper Wyatt,” she replied in a flat cold voice.

  When Lonnie first started her career in the Troopers, she had been told that her looks might be a difficulty for her. Her instructors warned that she would be constantly flirted with and harassed. Initially it had bothered her, even intimidated her, when suspects and officers alike would hit on her. They often assumed her too pretty to be strong. She eventually learned that her appearance could also be a powerful asset.

  By any standard of beauty in almost any country or society, Lonnie Wyatt was stunning. She learned to use her appearance to her advantage when necessary to coerce a suspect or informant to give every bit of information they had to her. With a simple angle of her eyes and tilt of the head, she could soften her expression to the point where most men were hypnotized by her gaze. Some men were stronger, and others were just jerks who didn’t take her seriously until she had to use physical force. Physical force was something at which she was also quite adept. Lonnie was a 4th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and 3rd degree in Hap Ki Do.

  Only two weeks earlier, a suspected meth dealer had tried to grab her gun during a warrant arrest. He quickly found his arm in a very unnatural position and could not explain to the medics how his face had been so badly bruised.

  And, as with many Northeastern Asian women, she had the ability to make her face appear extremely cold, even cruel, just by going expressionless and staring into a person’s eyes. Lonnie had become quite adept at scaring the willies out of almost any person with a well-timed icy stare.

  “I understand you met a couple of suspicious people earlier this evening at the TVEC substation?”

  “Wow, you like to get right to business don’t you? My kinda girl.” He smiled.

  “Look, Officer Bannock,” she started.

  “You can call me Charlie.” A grin spread across his face that Lonnie thought seemed oddly uncomfortable to him.

  She looked at him with cold, hard stare, accentuated by her stoic Korean features. “Fine, Charlie. I don’t have time to waste with flirting.” She put her hands on her hips and assumed an aggressive stance. Her voice was sharp. “You don’t have a chance with me. Let’s get to business so we can catch these guys.”

  His face flushed red with a boyish look of embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I assume you’re talking about the two Albanian guys?”

  “Yes, tell me everything you saw to the best of your recollection. I also have to let you know that this conversation is being recorded,” she said.

  Bannock motioned to a rectangular folding table with a single metal chair on each side. He walked toward it, then sat down and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, spreading his hands and tapping the fingers of one against the fingers of the other.

  As he gathered his thoughts, Lonnie took a quick look around the room. It was about fifteen by twenty feet, with plain white Sheetrocked walls. Behind the chair farthest from her was a window through which she could see outside to the guardhouse at the entrance. The guard who had let her in was sitting inside the small booth, smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback book.

  Behind Bannock, along the long wall that stretched the whole length of the room, was a desk-height shelf covered in a series of computer printers, monitors, and CPUs. A short metal rack on the floor at one end contained a single device about the size of two pizza boxes stacked together. The IBM logo stood out on the front cover of the device, next to several two-inch-wide by four-inch-tall vertical rectangles that filled the rest of the front surface. It looked identical to a device in the computer network closet at the Public Safety building that was used to store video from the cruiser cameras at the end of each trooper’s shift. She remembered the IT guy calling it a NAS, whi
ch stood for something she couldn’t remember. Its real name was totally lost on the troopers in the office, who referred to it as the NASAL Server.

  On several of the monitors, she could see color images being fed in from surveillance cameras around the compound. One of the cameras showed the entrance gate and part of the courtyard of the TVEC station.

  “Right,” Bannock said. “Well, here is what I saw.” He explained everything in detail as he had with Eugene earlier in the evening.

  “So, you were suspicious of them, based on a feeling you had?” she asked.

  “Not just a feeling, ma’am. I spent twenty-two years in the Army, seventeen of those years in the Green Berets and the Delta Project. I hunted terrorists around the world or trained the armies of other countries how to hunt them down. After a while, you begin to have a sixth sense of sorts. It’s what keeps a guy alive in that crap.”

  “As a cop, I can’t make an arrest on suspicions and feelings,” Lonnie replied. “I need facts, hard evidence of criminal behavior. Otherwise, we’re just wasting our time. It’s not a crime to speak Albanian.”

  “Look, these guys were up to no good, whether they work for TVEC or not. I’m telling you, based on my experience, that they’re connected to terrorism. That’s it, plain and simple. Take it or leave it.”

  “I understand your professional opinion, and you may be right. But it won’t hold up in court without hard evidence. And if it won’t hold up in court, I have nothing to take them in for…plain and simple,” she said. “If you don’t have anything substantial for me, then there’s not much I can do.” She glanced over to the network equipment and the bank of monitors. “Do you have any surveillance video of the substation?”

  “No. This equipment is all new and hasn’t been fully installed yet. Besides, the substation isn’t our property. Eugene Wyatt from TVEC just gave me permission a couple of hours ago to install some cameras there. I should have them in place tonight.”