by Basil Sands
The accented one spoke again. “Perhaps someone stole our Blazer. We wouldn’t have noticed it, since we’ve been inside all day.”
“Hmmm,” Beed said. “Maybe. At any rate, I need to see your student IDs and immigration cards, if you have them.”
“Officer, umm,” the tall one looked at his nametag. “Beed. Officer Beed, please step inside our house. It is too cold out here.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll stand out here. I’ve only got a couple more questions, then I’ll be going.”
“Well,” said the one with no accent, “it is cold for us.”
He handed a coat to the tall one, and reached for his own. Then he said, “By the way, your dispatcher was correct in her ten codes. We are armed and dangerous.”
There was a flash of movement behind the tall, dark European. Before Beed could react, the Albanian’s hand came up holding a semi-automatic pistol, a long, thick, sound suppressor extended from the end of the barrel. The policeman heard the quiet puffs and saw the bright flash in the dim light of the small incandescent fixture that hung next to the door. His body convulsed hard as two bullets smashed into his chest, piercing his body armor at close range. The shot sent him sprawling backwards over the steps. Beed landed flat on his back in the snow at the base of the porch.
His protective vest had slowed and deflected the trajectory of the bullets sufficiently so as not to kill him right away. The blond man took a step to the edge of the landing and looked into the rolling eyes of the shocked young officer. He raised the pistol again and fired a quick shot into the center of Beed’s forehead. The back of Officer Jimmy Beed’s skull exploded against the frozen ground. A slimy splatter of brains and blood burst against the white background of snow.
“We’d better get out of here,” Nikola said, a grim expression on his dark features. “They were sending backup.”
The two men grabbed a pair of daypacks from just inside the door and ran to the Blazer, carefully avoiding the gore on the snow. Adem, the blond, took a cell phone from his jacket pocket and pressed a speed dial number. He spoke quickly as they drove several blocks deeper into the residential neighborhood.
He hung up as Nikola pulled the Blazer off the road onto a snowy path on a tree-covered vacant lot. Pot-smoking teenagers frequently used the lot to get high away from their parents’ view. Tonight, it seemed the perfect place to ditch the Blazer.
The pair got out of the vehicle and returned to the road on foot. They ran down the recently plowed road for half a block, then turned up to a house that had a single light on in a downstairs room.
Adem knocked on the door. Both of them had broken into a sweat as they ran. That sweat evaporated in a steamy cloud around their heads in the frigid night air. It was negative twenty, or colder. The sweat beads froze solid in the shell of their clothing. They both started to shiver uncontrollably, hands stuffed deep into their pockets, shoulders raised against the cold, as they awaited the response from within the house.
A short, stocky Korean man in his early sixties with slate gray hair answered the knock. He motioned for them to enter and closed the door behind them. “Did anyone see your faces?” he asked.
“No one who is still alive,” Nikola replied, a deathly tone in his voice.
“Good. The vehicle is in the garage. Move to the other house across town. We are too close to finishing to evacuate you now. As long as no one saw your faces, you are in no danger and the mission will continue.”
They walked through the living room of the house to the kitchen. A door led from there to the garage. A red Dodge Dakota pickup truck sat waiting for them. As Adem and Nikola stepped over to the vehicle, the Korean man pressed the garage door opener button on the wall just inside. The large, paneled garage door yawned open, letting the cold night air drift into the heated room in billowing clouds of condensation that looked like a nightclub fog machine.
“Thank you, Mr. Kim,” Adem said. “We will await your call.”
Nikola got into the driver’s seat of the Dakota and started the engine. Having been stored in the garage, the vehicle needed no extra time to warm up. Adem jumped into the passenger seat. Nikola put it in gear and backed down the driveway. As they left the neighborhood, several police cruisers turned onto the road that led directly to the house they had left. They were moving very fast. The colorful emergency lights twirled on top of the cruisers, but they did not sound their sirens.
“The cops are trying to sneak up on us,” Adem said, and then grinned. “They are too late.”
Chapter 8
Marcus Johnson’s Cabin
Salt Jacket, Alaska
18 December
07:00 Hours
The morning darkness lay solid on the snow-blanketed arctic landscape. The earth glowed pale and cold under a three-quarter moon as it finished its sideways arc across the far north sky just above the horizon to the northeast. Dawn would not break the tree line for two more hours, the full sun not rising until after ten.
Marcus had gone the previous night to his friend and gunsmith Al Philbert’s cabin/business. He had left his grandfather’s old Springfield 1903 .30-06 rifle with Al for a general maintenance once-over. The weapon was in immaculate condition, but was also nearly a hundred years old. The last thing Marcus desired was to have it explode in his face while out in the field. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. Grandpa Johnson’s old rifle was a prime example of one of the most tried and true firearms ever produced in America
While there, Al offered Marcus a sample of his latest homebrewed smoked porter ale. Marcus, who had developed an affinity for the rich, dark stout beers while serving several tours with the British SAS and the Royal Marines, accepted the offer.
As it turned out, “Al’s Black Ops,” as the brew master had titled the concoction, was much stronger than either of them had expected, topping out at somewhere between ten and twelve percent alcohol. Marcus was religious about never driving under the influence. He made a point that even if he only had one drink, he would wait at least an hour before getting behind the wheel. Therefore, after two pints with Al in the period of an hour, Marcus told his friend that he would be sacking out on his couch for a couple of hours before heading home. Al, of course, had no problem with that, and for that matter, offered more to Marcus since he was staying. Marcus declined, not desiring a hangover to take with him on the trap line when he left in the early morning hours.
At five in the morning, Marcus woke and let himself out of Al’s cabin. He had one hundred and twenty miles of trap line to run in the next two days, and didn’t want to get a late start. He drove the twenty-five miles back to his own cabin. A note was tacked to the bulletin board that hung on his door.
Marcus had no phone or other way of answering the request, and couldn’t wait until Linus’s store opened to call the troopers. He left the note where it was and entered the cabin to get ready for his trip.
The cops can talk to Linus or Bannock—they know everything I know.
The trap line he was about to run was actually owned by another friend of his from the base. Air Force Major Steven Krisler, commander of the Arctic Survival School, had run a long string of snares to capture furs for his side business. Krisler was retiring from the Air Force soon and trying to get himself established as a taxidermist. He had been running the trap line across the back of the base for a couple of years now, and had taken Marcus out earlier in the season as a riding buddy.
The previous week, Krisler had gotten a hold of the retired Marine to ask him to run the line for him, as he had just received emergency orders to report to Afghanistan for a one-month temporary duty assignment. Marcus willingly agreed. He was looking forward to the time in the brush.
His own cabin was, by any average North American’s perspective, extremely remote already. But the prospect of taking a ride into the unpaved, off-the-grid backcountry always made him happy. There would be nobody for a hundred miles in any direction—just him and his snowmobile.
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br /> Marcus piled all his gear in the long cargo sled attached behind the snowmobile. He had loaded a sufficient quantity of food, extra clothes, camp supplies, fuel, and water, as well as a few spare parts for his snowmobile. He pushed his grandfather’s rifle into an insulated, hard black nylon scabbard that ran along the right side of the machine. In his backpack, Marcus also had a small .22 caliber Henry Survival rifle, disassembled and stowed neatly in its own stock. This he would use if the chance arose to take a rabbit or grouse along the trail.
He tucked his sidearm, a custom-made MEU-SOC Colt 1911A1 .45 caliber pistol, into a shoulder holster in his jacket. Marcus mounted his snowmobile, a long track Arctic Cat M series that had been specially modified to reduce the rumble of the engine to a level so low that from more than ten feet away, it was almost totally silent. Engineering students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks had designed several similar machines for a contest the previous year. Marcus managed to buy one through an ad in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner when one of the students became desperate for funds early in the current semester and offered his award-winning machine for a bargain price.
Marcus pulled out of his yard onto the trail beside Johnson Road, this time turning north toward the open country. He followed the trail past the TVEC substation and the pipeline pump station guardhouse. Twenty minutes later, he came to a chain-linked gate held open by a four-foot-high wall of plowed snow that concealed the lower part of the fence. A metal sign hung on the fence to the side of the gate.
US Government Property
Eielson Air Force Base
Authorized Access Only
He drove through the opening and followed the road another ten miles. In the early morning twilight, the headlamp of his snowmobile shone on a bright yellow reflective ribbon fluttering from the leafless branch of a tall paper birch tree that jutted at an angle from the surrounding cluster of twisted gray alder branches. The ribbon marked the entry to the trail along which Major Krisler had set up his trap line.
In order to have a trap line on military property, the interested party required special permission from the base commander. Once permission was obtained, the process took a whole slew of passes and paperwork that usually required months or years to get approved. Most people, soldier and civilian alike, are blatantly denied the opportunity to use the government property for personal gain. Krisler had not only received a permit to run the trap line in no time flat, but he was also given a trapping area twice the normal size. He revealed to Marcus that this was due to the fact that he had been at a taxidermist convention in Montana while on leave a couple years ago and literally bumped into the base commander at the hotel.
The commander, Colonel Robert Sloan, was laughing loudly as he came out of the hotel swimming pool with a very attractive young woman in her early twenties, whose bikini top was barely able to contain her jiggling shape. Krisler had been headed to a seminar in a conference room down the hall as he rounded a corner and nearly knocked over the towel-draped Colonel and his buxom companion. Krisler’s papers went flying onto the carpeted floor.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going, moron!” the commander bellowed.
“I’m so sorry,” Krisler replied, apologizing profusely as he bent over to pick up the papers.
“Yeah, well, you should be,” Sloan said.
As Krisler stood, he looked up and the two men recognized each other immediately. The major’s eyes slid over to the stunning young woman in the very small bikini, who quite obviously was not the forty-something Mrs. Louise Sloan he had seen at the Eielson Air Force Base commissary only two days earlier and who had mentioned that her husband was going on a trip for some high-level meetings at Malstrom AFB in Montana.
A growing look of horror, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, spread across Sloan’s face as his brain processed who it was standing before him.
“Colonel Sloan. How are you, sir?” Krisler asked. He made a visible show of scanning the scantily clad couple and noticed that the commander wasn’t wearing his wedding band. A sly smile slowly grew on his face. He made deliberate eye contact with the colonel.
“Uh, good evening, Major Krisler,” Colonel Sloan stammered nervously. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on leave. Here for a taxidermist convention.”
“Taxidermist convention?”
“Yes sir, taxidermy. You know, skinning dead animals, like weasels and such, to turn them into fur coats and statues for profit,” Krisler responded with a sardonic grin. “It’s what I am going to do after I retire.”
“Oh. Well, uh, carry on, then,” said the colonel, trying to get out of the awkward situation.
The major wouldn’t let him off so easily. “So, who is your companion, sir?” he asked, prying.
Sloan hesitated, and then introduced the voluptuous young woman “This is Connie, a friend of mine from, uh, from the university.”
Steven Krisler held out his hand and she took it, smiling back at him in a pleasant greeting. She was probably just a college student he picked up in a local bar.
“Hello. You two must work together in Alaska?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, we do,” replied the grinning Krisler, “And I must say, we work very well together, don’t we, Colonel?”
Sloan’s face drained of color. “Yes. Yes, we certainly do. Connie, this is Steven Krisler.” He looked back to Krisler, his eyes reduced to pleading slits. “One of my most trusted confidantes. Steven is a man I would trust with my life.”
“Wow,” said the girl, “imagine two friends so close, meeting each other so far away and not even knowing the other was going to be there.”
“Yeah,” said Krisler. “Go figure.” A mischievous smile spread across his face as he calculated how far he could go with the colonel.
The two men glared into each other’s eyes.
Krisler spoke. “Well, sir, I’ve got to be getting back to my seminar. Paid a lot of money to get here, you know, and they’re talking about a new technique for skinning and stuffing those little weasel-like creatures today.” He winked devilishly at the girl and added as he walked away, “Tell Louise I said hello. We’ll have to get together at your convenience once we get back.”
As he stepped down the hallway, he heard Connie speak to Sloan. “Who is Louise?”
“She’s my secretary. Let’s go get a drink.”
So Krisler had no problem getting, among other things, the most prime trap line in the interior of the state authorized for the rest of his final tour in the Air Force.
Marcus entered the snow-covered forest trail via an open space about six feet wide that was packed by regular snowmobile use. The trail snaked through the spruce, birch, alder, and willow in a meandering fashion. About a mile down the trail from Johnson Road, the first of the bright yellow ribbon trap markers hung loosely on a snow-laden branch of a low-slung spruce tree. Marcus halted his snowmobile and raised the bright beam of a large halogen spotlight to the base of the tree from which the ribbon drooped.
A roundish, medium-brown furry shape lay motionless in the snow beneath the canopy of branches. Marcus dismounted the idling vehicle and waded through a powdery sea of thigh-deep snow over to the creature.
It was a marmot, a species of large groundhog that normally hibernates through the winter. The animal had probably been fooled into waking up by the recent warmer temperatures, and it had gone out for a stretch. The dead creature’s mouth hung open, exposing yellow buckteeth and its tongue, which glittered with ice crystals. The body was frozen solid as stone.
“Well, my little friend,” muttered Marcus through the white neoprene Gator face-covering he wore to keep the chill air from freezing his lungs, “looks like you should’ve stayed in bed.”
Marcus tossed the stiff, frozen carcass into the back of the long sled, then took off for the next trap about a quarter of a mile down the trail. He arrived to find that it was empty. He remounted the snowmobile and kept going. The next several snares had
various creatures in them, followed by a number of empty traps. The pattern continued throughout the morning as he moved along the trail collecting a variety of animals. The prizes consisted mainly of fox and rabbit, with the singular addition of the first marmot. There was also one fair-sized lynx that, unlike the relatively cheap fox and rabbit pelts, would make some good money for his friend Krisler.
Dawn rose gracefully over the arctic landscape. The snow-covered spruce trees pointed skyward, their branches laden with impossibly heavy looking mounds of drooping snow, like white icing on a thickly frosted cake. The scene looked like a surreal painting on a picture postcard. If seen in an image online or in a magazine, people outside Alaska would find it hard to believe that this was an actual place.
As Marcus moved along the trail, he passed a series of unnatural-looking mounds. The hexagonally shaped hills were a group of abandoned military ruins that had at one time been nuclear missile bunkers. The area was studded with the former secret installations of Cold War-era Nike missiles that had been pointed over the pole toward the Soviet Union from the fifties until the fall of the “Evil Empire” in the late eighties.
Now, long abandoned in lieu of changing threat scenarios and newer technology, the bunkers that had housed masses of cylindrical devices that could have wiped earth of humanity a thousand times over were covered in leafless, frozen vegetation consisting mostly of spreading willow and tangled alder. In spite of the snow and vegetation, the bunker’s general shape was still visible beneath the snow, like an ancient monument to war hidden in the forest.
Chapter 9
At noon, Marcus stopped for a break to eat some lunch. After satisfying the hunger pangs in his stomach with a hot MRE meal pack, he lay back on the long seat of the snowmobile, set his feet on the pile of gear in the sled, and closed his eyes for a short nap.
