65 Below

by Basil Sands

  Ten minutes later they went out to Choi. The chair rattled on the icy gravel beneath his shivering body. The young soldier’s teeth chattered so loud, it sounded as if they would shatter from the impact.

  The men brought him back in and sat the chair next to the stove. No one questioned Choi. They left him alone until the sweat was again rolling over his skin. Five minutes passed, then they took him back outside. The sequence was repeated three times.

  At fifteen minutes till midnight, Choi was brought in and placed in front of and facing the stove. It had been stoked with several more pieces of wood. The iron door was left open, and its sides glowed cherry red. Yellow tongues of dancing flame licked upward. Shimmering red coals wavered hypnotically in the bottom of the stove. The room had grown so hot that the SEALs had opened several windows to vent the space. Most of the men went outside to stay cool. Next to the stove, even with the windows open, it was still like a furnace.

  Choi’s gaze was fixed on the flames that burned brightly inside the black iron box. The glow illuminated everything around him with an eerie, quivering light. His skin stung from the intense heat. The fabric of his clothing was drawing near its flashpoint. It could erupt into flames at any moment

  Marcus took a long, hooked metal poker from its rack against the wall and jammed it into the coals. No one talked or moved.

  Choi squirmed in the chair. “What are you doing?” he cried out in Korean. “This is against the law! Against the Geneva Convention!”

  “So is terrorism,” Forester replied flatly.

  Marcus left the room for a moment and returned with a large white oven mitt on his right hand. He took the poker out of the flames and turned to Choi. The end of the poker glowed bright red. Heat waves wiggled into the air as the Marine slowly moved the long iron rod to within two inches of Choi’s thigh.

  Choi’s breath came in short gasps. His eyes widened into a wild stare as he anticipated the searing agony of the poker being jabbed into his legs.

  “Tell us where your comrades will meet with the rest of the team,” Forester said calmly.

  “No! I will not tell you!”

  Marcus jabbed at his inner thigh with the red-hot iron.

  Choi screamed.

  The hot metal instantly singed the fabric of his pants. Heat coursed through the thick layers of snow pants and thermal underwear. The smell of burned cloth stung his nose. Choi panted uncontrollably. His nose crinkled and his lips curled on the verge of weeping. Marcus shoved the iron back in the fire. Sparks exploded from the glowing coals.

  “Look!” Forester shouted. “You had better tell us where your friends are. I cannot control these men much longer. They are very upset and may kill you, but only after hurting you for a long time.”

  Choi’s body shook with sobs. The exposed skin on his chest was red from the heat of the stove. Marcus took the iron back out and shouted in Korean. “Chigum, no gochu!” “Now your penis!”

  Forester made a show of pleading with Marcus for mercy. “Please, no!” he said.“Give him another chance. I know he will talk. Don’t hurt him yet.”

  “He must talk now, or I will emasculate him,” Marcus said. Hatred and cruelty flashed in his eyes as he glared at the panic-stricken Choi.

  Forester turned back to Choi, a desperate look in his face. “If you don’t tell us now, this man is going to burn your balls off, maybe even more!”

  Choi grimaced in terror, his face tight with fear. He pleaded with Forester. “No! Please no!”

  “Tell us where the others went!” said Forester

  “No, I can’t! They will kill me!”

  Forester pointed to Marcus and shouted, his voice full of exasperation. “That man will burn your balls off if you don’t talk now!”

  At that, Marcus pushed Forester aside and moved in, jutting the poker into the chair inches from Choi’s crotch. Blue swirls of acrid smoke curled up from the wooden surface, drifting into Choi’s nose and eyes. An audible sizzle scratched the air.

  “Tell me!” Marcus shouted in Korean. “Speak now!” He grabbed Choi by the hair of his head, raised the poker, and slammed it back into seat of the chair close enough that the North Korean could feel the heat on his private parts.

  Choi let out a scream and shouted, “A house on Farmer’s Loop road! We were to meet at a house on Farmer’s Loop road!”

  The door to the cabin burst open. Wyatt, Edwards, and Tomer walked in.

  Chapter 27

  Marcus stood above the bound man in front of the fire. The red-hot iron still sizzled between Choi’s legs.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Tomer shouted. “Jesus H. Christ! Are you torturing that man?”

  The men turned to see who was speaking.

  Choi was muttering in Korean. Forester knelt next to him, listening closely and writing the details on a notepad.

  Marcus returned the poker to its rack. He stepped across the room toward the new people. He looked at Lonnie and said, “Who is he?”

  Tomer pushed himself forward and confronted Marcus, hands on his hips. “Anthony Tomer, Special Agent, FBI. And if you have been torturing that man for information, I will have you...”

  “Shut up,” Marcus interrupted.

  The FBI agent was stunned by the blunt command. He glanced around the room into the stares of the cold-eyed men that surrounded him.

  Forester stood up. “He said it is somewhere on Farmer’s Loop Road, north of town, but he doesn’t know where exactly.”

  “Why wouldn’t he know?” Wasner asked.

  “He just keeps saying Farmer’s Loop, and that they will kill him.”

  “Does he know any more?”

  “Probably, but it might take a while to get it out of him.”

  Lonnie stepped forward. “You speak Korean?” she asked Forester.

  “Yes, ma’am, do you?”

  “Natively. Maybe I can get more out of him,” she said. “Let’s switch up.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Back him away from that fire first. Loosen the ropes on his chest a little.”

  The men moved Choi away from the fire to a far corner of the room where Lonnie could speak to him in some privacy. She knelt down, made eye contact with him, and spoke softly.

  “Sir. What is your name?”

  “Choi Ki Pyun,” he said between tearful sobs.

  “Are you a soldier?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I, too, am Korean. You can call me Nuna,” she said, referring to the respectful yet affectionate title given to a man’s older sister, or to a woman who is a few years older but on personal terms with the man.

  He raised his eyes to look at her. She gave him a kind and gentle smile. After the trauma of the giant warrior’s methods, her soft familiar face and tender Korean voice broke him down completely. Sergeant Choi spilled his guts.

  Chapter 28

  Interior Regions Remote Office of the State Evidence Center

  Fairbanks, Alaska

  19 December

  23:26 hours

  Franklin Eckert sat at the workbench in the computer lab. The facility in Fairbanks was primarily used for evidence storage until items were needed down at the state crime Lab in Anchorage. As small as it was, it did offer some diagnostic and testing equipment for minor jobs that needed to be done quickly.

  Two metal boxes lay on the stainless steel work surface. Eckert studied them. Each one was just over one foot square and about two inches thick. The boxes had an electronic keypad, like one that would be used on a digital door lock, just to the left of center. A round indentation next to the keypad contained a metallic handle, folded over to one side and held down with a spring so it was flush with the surface.

  Eckert picked up one of the boxes and inspected it on all sides. There were no markings or writing of any kind on the outside of the box. The top and sides were one piece of stamped metal, forming a box. Four pan head screws, set flush with the surface, fixed the bottom plate on.

  “You
sure these things have no explosives in them?” he asked officers Straub and Kelley of the state Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team, EOD.

  “Well, if they do, it’s something newer than the latest detection technology,” replied Straub. He motioned to a device that looked very similar to a hand-held vacuum cleaner. “These are brand-new bomb sniffers, and they found nothing. Our x-ray only showed a bunch of circuits and chips in there.”

  Franklin wiped the sweat from his forehead, some of which dripped onto the table in front of him. He turned the box upside down, picked up a screwdriver, and removed the screws that held the bottom of the case on.

  Once he had all four out, the bottom of the box easily slid apart from the rest of the unit and Franklin stared at what lay before him. The contents consisted of a generic computer board, with several dozen EPROM chips, a handful of capacitors and resistors soldered into it. Wires ran from the board to the keypad and the handle. There were words on the board and the chips, both English and Chinese. The parts were generic and easily obtainable computer components that could have been acquired at any electronics store.

  The bottom section of the box felt heavy for the amount of metal. Franklin held it up and looked at the space between the circuit board and the steel plate of the case. In the centimeter-thick space lay what appeared to be a wide, flat magnet.

  Franklin set it back down and traced which wires went to what components. He ran his finger along the embedded circuits on the board, mumbling to himself as he studied the device. He set all of the parts down on the table, sat back and stared at it.

  “Well?” asked Officer Straub. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve seen stuff kinda like it before, but not exactly. This is interesting.”

  Officer Kelley asked, “Can you figure it out, or should we send it down to Anchorage?”

  Franklin scratched his head. During six years in the Navy, he had laid his hands on some of the world’s most sophisticated, high-tech electronic warfare equipment. He knew more about computer circuitry and how to use electricity as a weapon than almost any other man in the country, maybe even the world. He stared contemplatively at the contraption then almost jumped out of the chair. Eyes wide, he stood up and studied the metal box again. Noting the layout of the wires from the panel to the keypad, he turned to the other box, opened it, and looked at the wires in it. Franklin put the lids back on both boxes and picked one up. He walked across the room to an electrical outlet.

  “Straub,” he called. “Come here and hold this box right over that outlet.”

  Straub did so. Franklin pulled up the spring-loaded handle and twisted it as far as it would go, about half- way around the raised circle. A soft hum floated from inside the box. He pressed six number keys on the pad and walked to the table, where he picked up the other box and took it to an outlet on the other side of the room.

  “Kelley, go over to the door and tell me if you see anything happen out in the hallway in a second.”

  Franklin then twisted the round handle on that one and pressed six numbers. As he released the last of the numbers, the lights went off in the room.

  Kelley grunted in surprise and said, “Uh, the power just went off in several offices and part of the hallway. The copier right outside this door is still running, though.” He paused, then added, “The emergency lights aren’t kicking on like they should.”

  Franklin then twisted the handle to its original place, and the lights came back on instantly.

  “Uh, huh! I got it,” Franklin said triumphantly as he walked back to the table. He set the box down and took it apart again.

  “Can I take this thing off the wall?” asked Straub, who was still bent over the outlet across the room.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry. Bring it over here.”

  “So, what is it?”

  “It’s an active relay power switch of some kind. Not only that, but it’s an intelligent hard-coded network device. Their power source is some iteration of an electromagnetic Tesla machine, incorporating magnets to siphon energy from the nearest electrical source.” He glanced up from the device and turned to the EOD officers. “Do you guys have an EPROM reader?”

  Kelley gave him a blank look. “We’re bomb squad, not geek squad. Speak English.”

  Franklin thought for a second and translated into laymen’s terms. “They’re computers that are powered by pulling energy into the magnets under the board inside the box. The magnets are activated by turning the handle on the front.” He pointed to the board and continued. “The EPROM’s are these little, rectangular black silicon chips that are soldered onto the board. Each one has a code programmed with a particular set of instructions. The devices are set up to communicate with each other across a network of regular electrical wires. You put one at one end of a circuit, the other at the other end. Turn them on, and voila! When the two devices see each other, they run a command to disrupt the circuit between them. They turn off the power to everything in that line.”

  “Wow,” Straub said. “That’s incredible.”

  “Actually, it’s a fairly simple machine. Not very fancy, but effective,” Franklin answered.

  “So, how did you know the combination?”

  “Oh, that was easy. The designers must not have expected anyone to capture one. They used a simple electronic door lock keypad and just wired the active buttons directly to the board. They didn’t even require a particular order. You just had to hit all six numbers in any sequence. When I did it, I actually typed the numbers in different sequences on each box and it still worked. They dumbed it down so a less-than-stellar grunt could run them.”

  He turned back to the computer and said, “If I had an EPROM reader, I could find the code that’s on those chips and get more detail as to exactly how these things work. But if we can’t do that, I’m pretty sure my guesses are almost on the bull’s eye.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?” said Straub.

  “Remember when the lights went out in Baghdad just before the Marine invasion in ’03?”

  “Yeah, saw it on CNN. I watched the whole thing.”

  “I did that, with a similar but much more complex device. We were trying to make it dark without destroying the electrical infrastructure. Saddam’s guys ended up blowing up the grid on their own as a bridge-burning retreat kind of maneuver. The news networks blamed our planes for smashing their infrastructure, but we were actually working our butts off trying to save it.”

  “Man, Eckert, what in the world are you doing as a dispatcher at TVEC? You should be at the NSA or at least with the CIA or something.”

  “Not unless they open an office here in Fairbanks. I’m not leaving Alaska again, even if I have to work as a logger to make a living.”

  Chapter 29

  Marcus Johnson’s Cabin

  Salt Jacket

  19 December

  23:58 hours

  “I don’t know who you think you are, mister, but we do not torture people in this country!” Tomer’s face was beet-red as he recovered from Marcus’s aggression. White flecks of spit sprayed from between his teeth as he flung the word ‘torture’.

  Marcus ignored him. He turned his back to Tomer and watched Lonnie talk softly to Sergeant Choi. He tried to listen to what Choi was saying. The FBI agent’s harangue made it impossible.

  “Everything that went on here is going to be reported in writing, and you will be held accountable for any illegal actions.”

  Wasner approached Tomer, a genteel grin on his face. “Agent Tomer? Can I call you Tony?”

  “Who are you?” Tomer demanded.

  “I am Chief Warrant Officer Harley Wasner, US Navy, Special Operations Command. I am in charge of this team of elite warriors. I also happen to have an above top-secret level security clearance and direct access to the director of Homeland Security, who, under the recent reorganization, I believe is now your boss. I also, as it happens, am on a first-name basis with the president of this fine country. You know, he calls me Ha
rley and I call him Mr. President.”

  Tomer eyed Wasner as he continued speaking.

  “We are dealing with a matter of utmost national security here, an extremely urgent matter having to do with the potential use of weapons of mass destruction against a civilian population in this country. Are you getting the picture here, Tony?”

  The FBI agent pointed at Chief Wasner, the heavy gold chain around his wrist swung like a tiny pendulum as he jutted his finger on every other syllable. “I don’t care how high your connections may be or what you think the threat may be. You cowboys are not out in some far-off dessert where you can get away with this shit. This is still America, and I have been put in charge of this investigation. You will be following my command now.”

  “Agent Tomer,” said Wasner in a clinical tone, like a psychiatrist counseling a troubled client, “I believe this investigation has surpassed your scope of responsibility. It is no longer a law enforcement issue. It took place on a military installation involving known members of a foreign military service, and has become a military operation. I also believe that we need to act immediately on whatever Trooper Wyatt discovers while talking to this man. And I believe that if you have a problem with the way I’m running this operation, you will need to discuss that with my good friend and fellow SEAL, Torrence Hall, Deputy Director of Homeland Security, Western Region. He’s in Anchorage, I believe, this very night on some other business. I’m sure you have his direct cell phone number, n’est pas? If not, I do, and would be more than willing to share that information with you.”

  Tomer curled his lip and sneered contemptuously as he realized that he had been checked. He was not willing to let Wasner get the last word in.

  “So, you’re the leader of this outfit of baby-killers, huh? You must be the one who’s banging the pretty trooper, then.”

  Marcus stiffened. Wasner noticed Marcus’s reaction, and a sly smile slid across his lips.

  “I beg your pardon?” Wasner asked. His face softened to an expression of innocence.