65 Below

by Basil Sands

  Barclay told Marcus the officers tried to push the men as far as they could before a weekend off in an effort to keep their frivolity to a minimum. It seldom worked, although judging by the looks on the faces of these men, this Friday session was more than they had been accustomed to. By the time they reached home again, every one of them was utterly exhausted.

  It was just before 10:00 when they were released and told to go enjoy a delicious breakfast. There was more than a hint of cruelty in such a dismissal. The mess facility had closed at 09:00 and wouldn’t open again until 11:30.

  After lunch, Marcus was formally introduced to the officers of the company. Colonel Sean Farris, commanding officer of 43 Commando, welcomed him and mentioned with some degree of respect that Marcus’s reputation in Special Operations had preceded his arrival at the base. The commander assured Marcus that he would fit in quite nicely and that they were looking forward to his instruction in sniping and small team deep reconnaissance as the year went on. Colonel Farris then turned Johnson over to Regimental Sergeant Major Charles Smythe, a short, thick man whose five-foot six-inch height accentuated the dimensions of his chest, arms, and neck. The man looked as though he were crafted from the stump of giant oak tree.

  RSM Smythe took Marcus on a tour of the base, introducing him to the other Royal Marines and Naval units stationed there before dropping him off back at the barracks. The weekend was relatively uneventful. Marcus spent most of it taking in the local color of Plymouth with Barclay and Smoot.

  The following Monday brought with it a real schedule. It was the beginning of a new training cycle. The men of 43 Commando spent all of Monday and Tuesday and most of Wednesday encamped on a stretch of soggy coastal marsh across the water from Plymouth, dubbed “The Sound”. They endlessly practiced tracking and stalking skills at all hours of the day and night.

  On Wednesday evening, they returned to the base, cold, wet and tired. The troop was given orders to clean up and get ready for another five-day exercise scheduled to be held farther south beginning Thursday. They were to work on swift watercraft insertions and cold-water swim insertions. While it was an exhausting schedule, the training had been excellent so far. Marcus was looking forward to the sea work.

  Just after supper that evening in the NCOs’ mess, one of the sergeants from Kilo Company, a man called Pops because of his prematurely gray sideburns, approached the table at which Marcus was dining with Barclay and a corporal named White.

  “Hey, Gunny Johnson!” Pops called out. He smiled in greeting at the other two. “We got a strange bit of mail and it took a while to find the intended recipient, but …” he reached out and extended an airmail envelope toward Marcus. “…here you go. Between your postal and ours, they marked the envelope up so badly that the name and most of the original address got all smudged up. The return address has been totally obliterated. But we could just make out that it was intended for someone at Camp Pendleton in the first case, so we figured it must be you, being that you’re the only Yank with us at the moment.”

  “Thanks, Pops.” Marcus gratefully received the envelope from the other man.

  “No problem.” He stood above Marcus for a moment, as if he had more to say.

  Marcus looked back up, implying permission to speak, and Pops went on. “Hey, Gunny? I hear you’re from Alaska originally. Is that true?”

  “Yes, it is. From a little town called Salt Jacket up in the interior.”

  “Oy! That is grand, simply grand. I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska. It’s like my dream place, you know. I’ve done Norway several times, but I hear that Alaska is ten times better.”

  “Well, we do have a lot more mountains, and space in general, that’s for sure. A lot fewer people, though. You can go hundreds of miles and see almost no one.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Quiet. When I draw my pension, that’s where I’m heading—the wilderness of Alaska, the Last Frontier. A cabin in the woods with no crowds, no electric, not even a bleedin’ telephone. Peace and quiet and no one trying to shoot at me. Maybe you can take me on a tour one day, what?”

  “Sure thing. Look me up when you get there and I’ll give you the grand tour. Maybe do some fishing or hunt a moose.”

  “Oy!” exclaimed the sergeant. “I will. Thanks, mate!” He walked away with a dream-like glaze across his eyes.

  Marcus was always amazed at the fantasy perception most people held onto regarding life in Alaska. He was endlessly getting asked what it was like. Did he live in an igloo? Did he have a dog sled? Did he herd reindeer? Was there really gold just lying on the ground?

  The truth, of course, was much different than almost everyone’s imagination conjured up. That was why the population of the largest state in the U.S. stayed so small.

  The closest Marcus had ever come to an igloo in Alaska was the snow fort he built as a child to play snowball wars with his best friend, Linus. His neighbors had driven dog sleds, but he wanted nothing to do with them, as it was a filthy life of daily cleaning dog poop in a yellow pee-stained patch of snow for a front yard. He had hunted and eaten caribou, but never herded the domestic reindeer, and didn’t know anyone who did.

  And as much as he would have liked it, there was no gold that he ever saw lying around on the ground. The only prospectors Marcus had known as a youth were always dirt-poor and barely eking an existence out of the ground where they endlessly dug.

  Life in an arctic wilderness was, at best, harsh. Marcus grew up on a homestead that had been carved out of the wilderness by his grandfather’s hands at a time when there were only a hundred people in an area the size of the whole of Devon County in which the city of Plymouth sat, population one million.

  Homestead life, also known as bush life, in Alaska was particularly harsh. Summers were spent growing what crops the ground could yield, which was usually massive amounts of extraordinarily large potatoes, beets, and carrots, and sometimes good seasons of broccoli and cabbage. Barley and oats were the only grains that really grew well. With the exception of several varieties of small, tart berries, there is almost no fruit to be had in the whole state.

  In addition to self-sufficient farming, life off the grid was filled with firewood cutting (nearly twenty cords of it every summer), roads and trails to be mended, milk goats to be tended, and all the construction a homestead may need. The fair weather construction-working window in the interior of Alaska is only about five months, from late April to late September. The rest of the year, October to the beginning of April, the whole region is blanketed in a deep covering of powdery snow and locked in by temperatures as cold as negative seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

  Most newcomers to the interior of Alaska usually end up retreating to the relatively warmer climate of the southern city of Anchorage within a year or two or, as often as not, leaving the state altogether to return to a place with four seasons and long hot summers. For this reason, in the one hundred plus years of western civilization in the area around the major interior city of Fairbanks, the population had never passed a maximum of one hundred thousand people. That population was spread over an area the size of nearly the whole of England, Scotland, and Wales combined.

  Marcus wondered to himself how long Pops, raised in London’s infamous East End, would really choose to stay in such a place.

  As he returned to his meal of roast pork and mashed potatoes, Marcus glanced at the envelope Pops had handed him.

  “So what you got there?” White asked. “A letter from your mum?”

  “A love letter from some broken-hearted wench he left in California, no doubt,” Barclay put in slyly. “Check it for perfume, mate. If there’s pictures, you’d better share.”

  Marcus laughed at his comment. “Man, there’s no woman in California for me. More than likely, it’s my mum or dad. They’re the only ones who write via post anymore. Everyone else does e-mail, although admittedly I only check in a couple times a month.”

  “Well, we’ll let you keep the letter from your fol
ks to yourself then. But if there’s any hot ladies in there, and you don’t tell us…” Barclay wagged his finger toward Marcus.

  Marcus stuffed the letter into the pocket of his trousers and finished his meal. Just as the last bite was entering his mouth, Colours Sergeant Smoot entered and strode over to the table, a serious look on his face.

  “What’s up, Colours?” White asked. “You look like you just ate a rotten egg.”

  Colours Sergeant Smoot looked the three men over quickly, then said in a low voice, “We’ve been called out. Just Mike Company, 2nd Troop. Finish your last bit of chow and head to the briefing room right away. Be there with the men in fifteen minutes—the colonel is on the way there now to give us the word.” He turned and walked back out.

  All three of them went silent. Barclay quickly gulped down the last bit of his milk as he rose from the table. Johnson and White followed, carrying their trays to the small window that lead to the galley. Twenty-three year old Corporal White stuffed a remaining handful of fried potato wedges into his mouth as he walked.

  Twelve minutes later, they were assembled in the company briefing room with the thirty-two men, including Lieutenant Childers of 2nd Troop, Mike Company, 43 Commando.

  “Attention on deck!”

  The brisk shout was followed by a sharp rustle and scrape of boots and chair legs as the men leapt to the ramrod straight position of attention. Colonel Farris strode briskly to the room and made his way directly up the aisle to the front. He turned behind a small podium and set down a small binder, which he opened, then spoke. “As you were, men,” He said in low, serious voice.

  The men sat back down in the metal folding chairs and stared up at their leader. The colonel spoke in a straightforward tone of command.

  “As of this moment and until further notice, your passes and liberties for this evening are cancelled. An order has come down directly from Number 10 Downing. It is labeled urgent. As all of you know, Sierra Leone, a former British Protectorate, has been in the midst of a civil war for several years now. We have stayed out of it, with the exception of a handful of military advisors, primarily SAS, who work directly with the recognized government.”

  He paused as an IT specialist finished setting up a laptop and projector, from which an image gradually glowed onto the wall behind Colonel Farris.

  “In recent weeks, the anarchist Revolutionary United Front has received a mass of weapons and cash, believed to be coming from several anti-west governments in Africa. Since receiving this fresh supply, their activity has exploded, particularly in the eastern regions. This is where you come in. Up until now, the RUF has left most outsiders, non-Africans, alone, or at most, ordered them leave the country. Last week, this changed. A Nigerian peacekeeping force came across the burned and mutilated bodies of half a dozen nuns from a medical clinic in a remote village in the northeastern jungle. They were all British subjects. The following day, an orphanage in a neighboring village, housing some two hundred children and staffed by an Irish Catholic priest and twelve nuns of both Anglo and African ethnicity, was put to the torch. All of the staff and most of the children were locked inside and burned to death. The boys of fighting age, which, down there, is only about ten years old, were taken by force to serve the rebels.”

  He clicked the mouse on the laptop and the image on the projector changed to a picture of several men and women.

  “These pictures are of several UK nationals, two priests, a dozen or so nuns, and several NGO workers who are in the area. We have been tasked to get in there as fast as possible, retrieve them, and get them to safety. I will be briefing the troop lieutenant and squad sergeants with the precise details and they will pass it down to the rest of you. In the meantime, you have about four hours to gather your gear, kiss your families goodbye, and meet on the airfield in full kit. Go with God, Marines.”

  At this, the junior enlisted men rose and left quickly. The married men went to kiss their wives and children, and the singles returned to the barracks and wrote quick letters to their parents. With goodbyes said, every one of them checked and packed their gear.

  Chapter 12

  Fairbanks Northstar Public Safety Building

  Fairbanks, Alaska

  December 18th

  04:25 Hours

  Lonnie heard Beed’s call for emergency backup and rushed to the scene. She arrived within seven minutes, alongside six other police and trooper patrol cars, to find Officer James Beed flat on his back, dead in the snow at the base of the porch steps.

  The officers cordoned off the house and yard with bright yellow plastic police tape, strung from trees to fence posts. The city crime scene van, a large, black panel truck with the logo and insignia of the State of Alaska Crime Lab emblazoned on the sides, weaved through the maze of police cars and came to a halt in the street in front of the house. Two men and a woman in black coveralls and large, puffy black parkas with the words “Crime Lab” stenciled in yellow across their backs climbed out of the van and approached the scene to begin the meticulous process of evidence gathering.

  “Damn,” said one Fairbanks Police officer, who stared down at Beed’s body. “Jimmy was such a nice guy.”

  “To think he survived two tours in Iraq with his National Guard unit just to come back here and get killed like this,” said an officer named Clark.

  “Think it’s gang-related?” said the first.

  “Dunno. CSI is gathering evidence,” Clark replied, “but it seems a bit too clean to me for a gang shooting.”

  “Someone with a place to hide,” Lonnie said contemplatively.

  “Yeah,” Clark said. He looked out to the road, past the gaggle of police cars, ambulance, and the CSI van. “Jergens and Porter just drove out looking around the neighborhood to see if they can find anything.”

  The city cop’s radios started chattering. Officers Jergens and Porter found the Blazer abandoned in the woods less than half a mile away. Footprints led from it, but the track was lost where the owners of the prints had stepped onto the plowed surface of the street.

  Lonnie tried to focus on the radio traffic and started toward her car. She got in the front seat of the cruiser and sat down. She had been tired when she arrived—now she was exhausted. The realization of this exhaustion told her that if she kept going, mistakes would be made. Lonnie had been working for nearly twenty hours straight. She was going to fall over if she didn’t get some rest soon. She climbed back out of her cruiser and found the on-scene commander, a police sergeant named Rimes. She asked him to send a copy of the report to Commander Stark as soon as it was ready, and then turned her shift over to another trooper at the scene.

  With permission of the shift commander, she signed off for the night and headed to her cozy two-bedroom A-frame chalet-style house on the banks of the Chena River. She pulled her cruiser into the garage at the rear of the house and closed the door, then sat in the cruiser in silence for a moment and went over the day.

  Her shift started at 03:30, thirty minutes before the blackout. Just another day in the sometimes boring, sometimes terrifying job of fighting crime. She had recently closed a major drug case and had no other projects on the table. She only need worry about work and her own needs. The men in her past were distant memories stored in the far reaches of her subconscious mind. She was single, self-motivated, and charging up her career ladder.

  By the end of the day, all her single-minded focus had been derailed at the mention of one name.

  Marcus Johnson.

  Lonnie walked into the house and went straight to the master bathroom. She turned on the shower and peeled the uniform from her heavy-feeling limbs. She hung her pistol belt from a peg within arms’ reach of the shower curtain and dropped the clothing into the laundry hamper. She pulled the pin out of the knot rolled tightly at the back of her head, and long, shining black hair cascaded down around her smooth, bare shoulders until the tips touched the angle of her shoulder blades.

  She looked at herself in the full-length mir
ror beside the walk-in closet door. Her figure was still very good, she thought. At thirty-seven and having lived at the edge of safety for the past ten years, many people showed more physical signs of stress in their bodies. Lonnie, whether through the course of her physical fitness and dietary disciplines, or through sheer luck in her genetic makeup, looked ten years younger than her calendar age.

  She was not tall, but not short either, standing at five feet, four inches. Neither was she thin or fat. Her face was smooth and oval-shaped, with a mildly squarish jaw. Her skin was light, but not white. A slight shade of tan glowed evenly over her entire body. Large, almond-shaped eyes looked out from beneath the slight fold of skin at her eyelids.

  Other Korean women were jealous of her eyes, and often commented that she must have had a very popular surgical procedure to make them so perfect, but she never had. Her nose was small and narrow, neither round nor pointed. It was a fun, perky nose that crinkled at the edges when she smiled.

  The medium thickness of her lips spread gently over straight, pearly white teeth. Her long, slender neck stretched to a lithe, fit body. Smooth courses of muscle ran under svelte skin. While she was very strong for a woman, her shoulders, arms, and abs did not reveal the iron temper of the muscles that lay within them. Her body looked warm and comfortable, even delicate.

  Full, round breasts hung on her chest. While they were not extremely large, at times she wished they were smaller, as her size 34C chest seemed to constantly draw men’s eyes when she wore T-shirts or tight sweaters or was not covered by her body armor and coat. As a whole, her figure caused men to trip over themselves while staring. She often felt men’s eyes on her and she knew they weren’t admiring her hair or her level of fitness. She hated going to the gym until the Alaska Fitness Club opened a “women only” club.

  Beneath her breasts, was the rest of her body. Her own shape never impressed her. But Marcus had said that her figure was a sculptor’s dream. Lonnie’s narrow waist, full hips, and round buttocks topped her proportionate smooth and fit-looking legs. The muscles in her thighs and calves rippled beneath the smooth, creamy, golden skin that wrapped them as she turned in the mirror. Her college girlfriends had tried to talk her into modeling, but her body was her own treasure, not to be shared with strangers on the pages of a magazine. It was hers alone now.