by Basil Sands
“All right, it’s due west for two-and-a-half miles, then we hook back to the south and come from the opposite side. Like they said in the briefing, watch for these rebel bastards. They’re sure to be near, and will certainly be awake with all the noise that plane made.”
The group of thirty-two men started off. Corporal White led in the point position. The Marines moved with cautious speed, stopping every hundred yards to listen to the jungle around them.
The plan laid out in Plymouth was to pass the village by half a mile then make their way back in a wide arc in hopes of flushing out, or drawing out, any RUF rebels who may be in the area.
The jungle was dark and dense, although not as thick as some of the Southeast Asian or South American jungles Marcus had been in before. Night animals skittered up the trunks of trees or froze in place among the branches, watching in wide-eyed silence as the strange human creatures walked by.
Within thirty minutes, they made the hook south and started back in a wide, sweeping arc toward the mission. No enemy had been detected.
At the outskirts of the village, Lieutenant Reeves placed four snipers around the perimeter to protect their exit. The remainder of the men moved cautiously into the village. It was composed of a collection of huts and a larger two-story wood-and-stone building that, according to intelligence, housed the orphans, the priests, and their staff.
It was only eight pm, but the village was silent. They had expected movement of some kind.
“What’s going on here?” asked Barclay. “It’s too quiet.”
“Where are the people?” someone else whispered.
“Maybe they are all early-to-bed types,” replied Lieutenant Reeves into his radio microphone. “1st Squad, check the huts to the left of the main building, 2nd Squad, take the right. 3rd, with me into the main building.”
The three groups moved toward their assigned buildings. Sergeant Barclay, NCO in charge of 3rd Squad, followed Reeves to the main building, Marcus and six other Marines spread out behind him.
“This is seriously bloody eerie,” Barclay whispered into his microphone.
Barclay, Corporal Jamison, and Marines Stokes and Klein got into position to open the door of the house, assault-style.
Suddenly one of the men from another squad cried out. “Bloody hell! Bloody Goddamned hell! We’re too late!”
“Lieutenant!” shouted a Marine to the left of the main building. “Lieutenant, there’s a pile of bodies in here! Women and kids! Oh, Jesus!”
The sound of a man retching into the dirt splashed through the darkness. Several Marines cursed. One openly wept at the sight of the dead children.
Lieutenant Reeves ran to 1st Squad to see what they had found. He signaled for Barclay and his men to wait at the main building.
As he crossed the halfway point of the open space, the night exploded into a terrifying cacophony of machine-gun chatter and screaming men. Flames erupted from the barrels of rifles, which fired from every window and most of the huts. More fire poured onto them from the shadows of the jungle around the village.
A dozen men fell. Those not killed instantly screamed in pain as the bullets ripped their flesh. The Marines who could returned fire toward every muzzle blast they could see until their own bodies were torn asunder by the attackers’ interlocking fields of fire.
Marcus dropped to his knees and fired into the jungle and huts in front of him. Everywhere he saw the flash of a blast, he put a three-round burst. Men of both armies screamed in agony as the white-hot bullets crisscrossing the night sky ripped their flesh.
Somewhere to his right, a hand grenade exploded, the sounds of men crying out echoed into the air. Several bullets smashed into the stone wall behind Marcus. He dropped to a prone position in the dirt and continued to return fire, changing magazines as he emptied his ammunition into the plentiful targets that surrounded him.
There was a loud hiss to Marcus’s left. He jerked the rifle in that direction and shot a burst into the torso of a man who a moment fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the same moment. The shadowy figure tumbled backwards, silhouetted in the blast from his RPG. Marcus watched the smoke trail of the rocket as it traced through the sky. The scene moved in a surreal slow motion. There was a loud boom, white light, heat. Marcus tried to raise his head back up to resume firing. Everything around him looked lopsided.
He attempted to fire his weapon, but couldn’t remember how. The world around him became a blur of movement. White spots danced before his eye to the tune of the incessant ringing in his head. Then everything went black.
Chapter 21
Johnson Road
Salt Jacket, Alaska
19 December
22:45 Hours
Marcus, Wasner, and the remaining SEALS tied up the prisoner and used a sled the dead men no longer needed to drag him back to the remaining snowmobiles. They attached the sled directly to the back of one of the machines and headed out. They were almost fifteen minutes behind the first team. Once they reached the road, they turned south toward Salt Jacket. As the team crested the last hill before leaving Air Force property, they came in line of sight of Marcus’s cabin where it sat silently in the darkness.
Wasner keyed his radio. “Fletch! Did you find them?”
“Negative, Chief. We’re waiting at the cabin.”
“Go ahead and load your gear in the trucks so we can move out quickly as needed.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Wazzy!” Marcus said into his mike, “I want to pull into the pump station. Charlie Bannock is one of the guards there. He might have seen something.”
“Charlie Bannock! The Special Forces wuss?” Wasner continued, “Man, this is like Old Home Day!”
When they arrived at the pump station gate, the rest of the team took the prisoner down to the cabin. Marcus and Wasner approached the gate on their snowmobiles. The guard stepped forward, talking into his radio. His MP5 was slung low, pointed toward them. His hand was on the pistol grip, finger extended alongside the trigger guard. A tense expression was on his face as the armed warriors drew near.
“Evening, gents. How can I help you?”
Marcus took off his hood and night vision glasses so the guard could see his face. A visible flush of relief spread over the guard, and he smiled. “Johnson? What in the world are you doing out here this late? I thought you were on the trap line.”
“I was. Something came up. Is Charlie here?”
“Yeah, he is. Hold on.” Bill pressed the talk button on the radio mike attached to the shoulder of his parka. “Charlie! Get up here—Marcus Johnson is asking for you. And he’s armed.”
The guard looked back at Marcus and Wasner. “So, what’s up with all the gear? And who’s your friend?”
“This is Harley Wasner, Chief of a group of SEALS I’ve been running around with tonight.”
“Howdy, Chief,” the guard replied. “I’m Bill Simmons, former Ranger myself.”
“Bill was on Operation Condor Retribution in ’06,” Marcus said.
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Bill,” Wasner said. “I was there, too. As a matter of fact, it was my team that did the laser designators for those cave bunkers that had you boys pinned down. That was one hairy day, as I recall.”
“Yes, it was, Chief. Yes, it was.”
Charlie Bannock came out to the gate. “Marcus! What’s up?” He turned toward the other man and stopped, mouth wide open. “Wasner? Holy cow! What brings you all the way up here? Didn’t they tell you there’s no ocean in the interior?”
Wasner smiled and said, “Well, Charlie ol’ boy, it’s like this. The Marine here became quickly overwhelmed and did the only obvious thing he could do, which was call in the Navy.”
“Figures.”
“We’ll have to chat later,” Marcus said. “We’ve got serious business.”
“Yeah? Does it have to do with those Albanians who were sneaking around here? That lady trooper was here asking questions a few hours ago, right when
I came on shift.”
“Maybe. We just got into a firefight with a bunch of North Korean commandos back there on Eielson. They were digging into some old bunker and taking out what looked like tubes of biological or chemical agent. We killed eight of them and took one prisoner, but some others got away before we showed up on scene.”
“Crap,” Bannock said, a look of dismay spread over his face. “I thought I was done with all this stuff!”
“Yeah, well,” Wasner replied, “it just showed up in your back yard, son.”
“We need to know if you or your men saw any vehicles coming out of the Eielson area within the past three hours,” Marcus said.
Bannock ran his thick fingers over his short-cropped hair. “I’ve been inside doing paperwork for the whole shift so far. And Bill here just came on twenty minutes ago.” He turned toward the guardhouse and said, “Let’s take a look at the logbook.”
Inside the guardhouse, Charlie opened the evening logbook. On the page under the current date were five entries: one stating a delivery from the Doyon supplies office, one of a single snowmobile with a teenaged boy who was doing “brodies” on the road in front of the gate. The third and fourth entries were Trooper Wyatt coming and leaving, and the fifth entry was a report of a single white Chevy Suburban heading out of the Eielson area at a high rate of speed with no headlights on.
“That’s them!” Marcus exclaimed. “Do you have surveillance video that may have caught the vehicle?”
“Do we have surveillance video?” Charlie replied. “Since the event with those Albanians, I decided to try out some of my new stuff. We just happen to be running several motion-activated cameras along the road and at the TVEC station.”
He led them out the door of the guardhouse and onto the base. “Bill, keep an eye on their machines. We’ll be right back.”
They walked to the main building on the pump station base and entered a brightly lit office through a thick metal door.
Inside, Bannock motioned them to seats in front of a bank of computer screens and video camera monitors. He sat down at the center of the console and pointed to a screen.
“This one is the road to the north. And this one is Johnson Road to the south. It shows us a real-time picture on here all the time, but the computer only records actual movement of anything bigger than about the size of a large dog.”
Bannock put his hand on a computer mouse and clicked an icon on the center screen. “So, let’s see if there are any recorded entries.”
The video viewing software opened, and within seconds, displayed a listing of every recorded movement the cameras captured that day. Date and time stamps were posted next to the filenames of the recording.
Assuming that the last entry would be Marcus’s group of snowmobiles, Bannock clicked on the file just above it in the list and watched it. The software brought up a video that played automatically. It showed a large white Chevy Suburban drive by with no headlights on. The camera’s night recording capability was exceptional. It rendered a very clear picture from a distance of ten yards.
“Can you zoom in on the truck and get us a license plate?” Marcus asked.
“You bet,” Bannock replied. He froze the video playback.
With a few clicks of the mouse, he zoomed in on the image. The details of the faces of two men sitting in the front seat became visible. Both were Asian-looking. Shadowy images of two more men were in the back seat, but no features could be made out.
Bannock panned down to the plate, and once the area of the license filled the screen, he increased the brightness and contrast of the image until the numbers and letters became clear. He clicked the print button on the program’s menu bar. A color laser printer next to the computer whined to life. Within a few seconds, they were holding several clearly legible full-color pictures of the license plate, the vehicle, and its occupants. Marcus took the pictures and headed for the door.
“Charlie, call Trooper Wyatt and let her know what you found. Tell her what I told you and that they must find this suburban. Wazzy, let’s go talk to our prisoner.”
They got up to leave and Bannock said, “Next time you fellas are out here, you’d better let me know. We have quite an arsenal here and almost everyone of us is a combat veteran. We’re a good source of backup.”
“Thanks, Chuck,” Wazzy replied. “Once this thing blows over, I’ll take you out for a beer. Is it still Guinness?”
“Of course. Do they even make anything else?”
Chapter 22
Fairbanks Memorial Hospital
Fairbanks Alaska
19 December
22:55 Hours
Trooper Wyatt pressed the disconnect button on her cell phone and turned to Commander Stark. “Chief, I’ve got news from Marcus.”
“Good or bad?”
“Let’s move into a private room.”
They stepped out of the hallway into a nearby interview room.
“Charlie Bannock with Doyon Security just called me from Pump Station 8. He said Marcus stopped by to see him with a guy named Harley Wasner, chief of the SEALs that I saw at Marcus’s cabin. They told him they just had a gunfight with some North Korean commandos on the back of Eielson. There are eight dead, four that got away. One prisoner. They’re keeping the prisoner at Marcus’s cabin in Salt Jacket.”
“Oh, dear Jesus! They’re killing people?” He pressed his fingers into the deeply furrowed wrinkles of his brow. The veins in his temple pulsed. “Shit!” Stark looked at his watch. “DHS is sending an FBI agent over. Is there a way to get a hold of Johnson?”
“No, sir, at least not directly,” said Wyatt. “He has no phone, or even electricity, at his place. I could call Bannock back and have him relay a message for us. Bannock also said that they identified the vehicle with the men who escaped. It’s a white Chevy Suburban, recent model. He’s faxing me a photo of the truck and the license plate.”
“Get that plate run and let me know when you get the response. In the meantime, let’s hold off on contacting Johnson till Homeland Security gets here. I am sure he and those SEALs will be working on the prisoner, and it’s probably best I don’t know how they get their information from him. I want you to talk to Kim, and see if you can get anything out of him.”
“Will do. I’ll head over there now.”
She walked back down the hallway to room 16, where Mr. Kim was being kept under suicide watch. Three troopers stood inside the room making sure Mr. Kim didn’t try a repeat of what happened earlier in the evening.
Kim lay on a bed. He had no IVs or tubes in him and was not restrained like Ho had been. The angry-looking Korean man sported a lump on his head, and his shoulder throbbed from the fight with Trooper Wyatt. He was otherwise in good condition.
As Wyatt entered the room, Kim looked over at her with an expression like had just eaten a turd. He turned his head away in disgust. She came near the bed, but stayed out of arms’ reach.
Wyatt put her hands on her hips in an authoritative stance. This would irritate the hell out of Kim, and she was going to enjoy it.
“Colonel Kim.” Wyatt spoke in Korean. “Lieutenant Ho is dead. He killed himself after he realized he told me too much. You had better come forward and tell us what you were doing, and what Adem and Nikola were doing at your house.”
Kim ignored her.
“Colonel, why were a dozen North Korean commandos digging into the frozen ground on Eielson Air Force base? What was Choi looking for?”
He continued to look away. His cheek twitched involuntarily just beneath his eye. Wyatt’s words had hit on something in his conscious thought.
“Yes, we caught them. As a matter of fact, all but a few of them are dead, too. Their bodies are freezing in the snow right now. The prisoners will soon be talking, just like Ho did.”
Kim turned toward her and snarled, “I do not speak to women who think they are men.”
“That’s too bad. Because you can either speak to me, or Trooper Wakowski over there can take
the information from you in ways more like those to which you would be accustomed at home in North Korea.”
She pointed at Trooper Glen Wakowski, who stood near the door to the room. Wakowski, a former preschool teacher, was average height, but this in no way lessened his intimidating demeanor. His massive chest brought to mind images of four-hundred pound bench presses and bent iron rods. His arms, thicker than Kim’s legs, bulged through the blue cloth of his uniform.
Kim was unfazed. “Do not try to intimidate me, woman. I know you cannot torture in this country, regardless of your boasts. I am here on a legitimate business visa. I have broken no laws. It is you who broke the law by entering my house and assaulting me. I will speak no more without a lawyer present.”
“Funny thing about your visa. It is for one Kim Suk No, businessman. It says you are self-employed. But Ho said you work for a general. What do you do for that general, Mr. Kim?”
No response.
“You were illegally in possession of automatic weapons and were witnessed aiding known terrorists. This association, by logical deduction, means that you are now considered to be a terrorist.” She paused for a moment. “Do you like the tropics, Colonel?”
Wyatt waited for him to answer.
“I hope you do. We send terrorists to a special camp in Cuba called Guantanamo Bay. There, the US Marines keep you safe and secure. FBI agents are on the way here right now to process that paperwork.”
Kim turned away and stared at the wall, effectively ending the conversation.
“Too bad you won’t talk to me. It would have been much better for you if you had.”
As she turned to leave, the door swung open and the evening janitor walked in. He was a Korean man in his late forties. On the ID badge pinned to the janitor’s smock was printed a name in big black letters, ‘Chun, Joseph’.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said in accented English. “I didn’t know the room was occupied.”
