by Basil Sands
In more recent times, Nenana had become internationally famous for an event called The Nenana Ice Classic. The event surrounds betting on when a large wooden tripod set on the ice of the frozen river in early spring will topple into the river through the thawing surface. Bets are placed throughout the state. The winner is the person who guesses the time of the collapse to the nearest second, taking a prize of as much as $300,000 home for their trouble.
The red wine-colored Ford Explorer pulled under the awning next to the pumps at the only twenty-four hour business in the city of Nenana—Aurora Gas and Goodies. The men originally intended to bypass the town altogether. Twenty miles back, a tractor-trailer had jackknifed coming down one of the steep highway passes between Nenana and Fairbanks. It blocked the entire road, which was only two lanes wide, until a massive Peterbilt tow truck came and dragged it straight again. The mishap put them an hour and a half behind schedule.
Lieutenant Shin and Sergeant Sun got out of the SUV and walked into the station to use the toilet and purchase energy drinks and snacks for the drive. As they entered, the clerk came out of a back room, suffering from a terrible-sounding hacking cough. “You guys are out late, aren’t you?” said the twenty-something clerk once he caught his breath.
His crooked name tag dangled from its pin on his left breast. Large black letters spelled “Mikey” on its white surface. Mikey’s eyes looked as though he had been slicing onions before they came in. The acrid smell of burned marijuana swirled in the air from the back near the restrooms. “It’s getting pretty cold to be driving around, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that again,” Shin replied in perfect, unaccented English. “We’re heading south, though; hopefully it’s going to be warmer down there.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got to go through the mountains. And the radio forecast said it might get into the negative sixties tonight.” The clerk stared at Shin with an increasingly glassy expression.
“So, what you been smoking back there, man?” Sun asked with a smile, his English also flawless.
“Dude…” the clerk’s voice sounded vaguely concerned. “You guys cops?”
“Hell, no!” Sun replied with a grin. “We’re looking for a good score too, you know?”
“Dude, you don’t know. I got some of the best weed this morning.” The clerk reached up and groggily rubbed his cheeks with both hands. “I’d give you some, but …you know…it’s all gone.”
“You smoked it all?” Sun said.
“Dude.” Mikey’s speech was becoming slurred. “Like…I can’t even feel my face right now.” He grinned stupidly as the pot took his mind over. His eyes slowly closed to mere slits as they watched. Sun shook his head and walked to the toilet to relieve himself. Shin gathered up several snack items and returned to the counter as Sun came back out.
Mikey’s expression bordered on vegetative.
“Cool,” Shin said. “Then we can just take this stuff, right? No charge?”
“Yeah,” mumbled the dazed clerk. “Whatever.”
“Thanks, Mikey,” Sun said as they walked out the door.
Switching to Korean, Sun said, “Well, Lieutenant, I don’t think we have to worry about him remembering our faces.”
“I think you are right,” Shin replied, shaking his head. “Dope heads like Mikey are why we’ll have no problem taking over this country.”
The pair got back into the vehicle and drove toward Anchorage. It would be five or six more hours before they arrived in Eklutna. They agreed to drive in shifts, three hours each, while the other slept. Sun had first duty driving.
Lieutenant Shin had a hard time falling asleep at first, but after nearly forty minutes, finally managed to slip into a dark, dreamless sleep as the Explorer rolled down the highway.
“Sir?”
Sun called him back to consciousness. He looked at the radio’s clock display. It was four AM. Shin had only been asleep a little more than ten minutes.
“We may have a problem.”
Shin sat upright and looked out the windshield into the long, flat distance that stretched before them at the top of the mountains just north of Healy. About five miles ahead, what appeared to be a roadblock consisting of two police cars, blue-and-red lights spinning, and a lighted barricade blocked direct passage down the road.
Four minutes later, they made out the shapes of two troopers and what looked like a soldier standing near one of the vehicles.
“Get your pistol ready, but keep it out of sight,” Shin said. “It may be something else—I don’t know how they could be on to us already.”
The two men pulled their pistols out of the waistbands of their pants and laid them high on their laps. They hid the weapons from the police officers’ view with the edge of their long parkas. The two troopers took positions on either side of the lane as they approached.
Sun slowed and came to a stop. He rolled down the windows and smiled up at Trooper Ted Brady. “Isn’t it a little cold for a sobriety checkpoint tonight?”
“Yes, sir, it is. May I see your driver’s license and registration, please?”
“Sure, Officer.” Sun reached to the sun visor above his head to get the registration card that was clipped to it. When his arms went up, the butt of his pistol slipped into sight from underneath his parka.
Brady’s eyes suddenly grew large and round. “Gun!” He reached for the Glock 10mm in his pistol belt.
Sun dropped his hand and grabbed for the weapon on his lap. There was a flash of movement from the two men on the passenger side of the vehicle at the same instant. Like a slow motion scene in a Wild West movie, the four men raised their weapons toward each other.
Chapter 38
Wednesday July 1st, 1998
Shisepi Creek
3 Miles South of the Guinea Border
Sierra Leone, Africa
16:00 Hours
Marcus had lain silently positioned on a ledge fifty feet above the gurgling waters of Shisepi Creek for nearly an hour before the first of Sergei’s men appeared. Across from him was an open field, two or three acres in size, with a sparse array of scrubby bushes and low tufts of grass. The track of the escaping band of refugees was very obvious across the field. Marcus counted on the scouts leading their men right into his line of fire.
Marcus would fire no more than a two or three shots then retreat to a series of successive fallback positions, the approaches to which were covered by the angles of the hill and foliage. He did want to join a pitched battle with Sergei’s men, but to stall them long enough—for up to two or three hours—for Temebe could get the villagers across the border.
As the late afternoon sun dipped to his right, it cast increasingly long shadows across the jungle. Marcus heard the radio hiss briefly, then erupt in a quick banter of thickly accented speech. It was English, of a similar dialect to that of Sambako’s village.
“We are at an opening, commander. The trail continues to the creek from here. I am concerned that it is too open. Perhaps we should go around in case they have set an ambush.”
“Follow it,” came the reply in a harsh Russian accent. “These country people are not soldiers! If they were, they would have stayed in their village to fight us. They have no idea how to set up an ambush. If you want to take their women, you had better speed up before they get to the border!”
The first of Sergei’s men cautiously emerged from the tree line. He nervously swept his rifle across the area in front of him as he moved. When he was nearly forty feet from the trees, a dozen men emerged behind him in a wide skirmish line. Five yards behind them came another dozen, then another.
In the fourth line to emerge, a tall, white man walked with the air of a warlord.
That’d be Sergei, Marcus thought.
When the scout was less than fifty yards away and eight lines of men filled the field, Marcus opened fire. The lead scout jerked to a stop, then tumbled forward in slow motion. Marcus took quick aim and fired at Sergei. He missed the Soviet, but too
k out a man standing directly behind him.
The group of rebel soldiers fired wildly, and ineffectively, in his general vicinity. He slinked down the back of the ledge and off to his next hide thirty yards upstream.
“Stop firing!” Sergei’s voice came over his walkie-talkie. “Where is he?”
Some spoke into a radio. “He was straight in front of Thomas! Straight ahead!”
Marcus took the radio and imitated the accent he had heard. “No! He is to the left, in the trees. I saw the muzzle blast from a shadow to the left.”
Sergei spoke back in to the walkie-talkie. “Move forward! It is just a diversion. 1st Squad, go check the left flank. Everyone else move forward!”
The men rose and started to move ahead again. As soon as they had taken ten steps, Marcus opened up again with five, fast, randomly aimed shots. Five men fell in rapid succession and he moved immediately to the next fallback position.
The men in the field dropped to the ground in terror. They fired their weapons blindly into the low hills and trees all around them. Thousands of rounds smashed into the forest, splitting tree limbs and shattering stones. Ricochets whined and whistled through the air. None of the dangerous projectiles were even close to Marcus. At this rate, they’ll use up all their ammo before they get much farther, he thought.
He repositioned himself fifty yards to the right, crossing the stream at a thickly wooded bend. He pulled the pin out of one of the hand grenades taken from the first scout earlier in the afternoon and placed it carefully under a broken branch that would topple easily as the men passed by. Once in his new hide, he waited until the group started moving again.
The men of Sergei’s ragtag army were moving much more cautiously now, their eyes wide in fear, brows furrowed as they stared into the jungle in search of their assailant. One of them brushed against the branch that held the grenade, and seconds later a deafening explosion tore three of them to shreds and sent more to the ground, screaming from shrapnel wounds.
It took fifteen minutes to regroup. He listened to the radio chatter as their commander barked orders and the men tried to help the wounded. Once they got their senses back, they changed direction. Sergei sent two squads uphill above the stream, trying to avoid more booby traps that could be in the vale on either side of the water. This exposed the soldiers to Marcus. He let loose a short burst, killing three more.
Marcus adjusted his position again while they tried to figure out from where he was shooting. A squad of rebels ran into the jungle, trying to outflank his last position, but by the time they reached the area, he was already another hundred yards upstream and waiting for their next move.
Half an hour later, they moved forward again. This time, the trail led them into a narrow bottleneck between two high and steep hills. He listened to them over the radio as they discussed the best route.
“We could skirt the hills on the outside,” said one voice.
“That will take us nearly a mile out of the way on either side of the stream,” another replied.
“Should we send men over the tops of the hills on both sides?” The first voice said.
“Don’t be stupid, we don’t know how many shooters are over there,” Sergei said. “Besides, that will add too much time. They are getting away.”
“He may be dead.” A voice said.
“Yes, it’s been more than thirty minutes since the last shot. He’s probably dead or run away.” Sergei said. “Stay on the trail, watch for traps and move quickly.”
The men rose and moved through the narrow gulley two or three at a time. He watched through the sights of his AK-47 from more than a hundred yards away. Marcus let two dozen men pass safely through, then Sergei came into view. Cautiously, moving up to and through the narrow opening between the hills, he stepped into the clear space on the northern side of the hills. The man called the Soviet, eyes darting warily back and forth, walked right into Marcus’s rifle sights.
At this distance, without a scope and, only using open iron sights, Marcus could not see the details of the man’s face. He could not see the cold iciness in the warlord’s eyes, or hear the curses on his breath as his frightened men drove on before him. At a hundred yards, through the metal post on the end of his rifle, all Marcus could see was a tall, tanned white man who had ordered the killing of an orphanage full of innocent children and their caretakers, who had slaughtered thirty-two Royal Marines sent in to the rescue, and who was now bent on killing the people who had helped Marcus survive.
Marcus exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger with his curled finger. The bullet slammed into the Russian’s chest. A fountain of blood splashed skyward. The Soviet staggered on his feet. Marcus squeezed again. The second round smashed into Sergei’s forehead, blowing his brains across the men behind him.
Men again began firing wildly into the woods in Marcus’s direction, but as before, their gunfire was poorly managed and missed him entirely. One man stood up and started to shout orders. He looked like the second-in-command, so Marcus planted two shots in his chest, sending him to the ground. At this, the rest of the men panicked and shouted in fear for their lives as Marcus continued to fire randomly at them, taking out four more with only one shot apiece.
Their leader gone, his second-in-command killed, and their comrades dropping like flies, the whole gang of thugs dissolved into a mass of frightened men, running back the way they had come.
Marcus slinked quietly into the jungle and followed the stream north. In a couple of hours, he would reach the border and safety.
Chapter 39
Thursday, July 30th, 1998
US Embassy
Conakry, Guinea, Africa
Ambassador Malcom Lime was shocked when the Marine staff sergeant at the security station called his office and told him that there was an American who claimed to be Marcus Johnson at the front desk.
“Marcus Johnson, the Marine gunnery sergeant?” he asked, bewildered. “Can you verify his identity?”
“Yes, sir. I trained under this man at Quantico just three years ago. This is Gunny Johnson, sir—two other Marines down here concur.”
“Oh, this is unbelievable, Sergeant. This is great! Send him up without delay, then.”
The ambassador opened his door and waited for Marcus to be led to his office. A moment later, Marcus Johnson, in a white button-down shirt and black trousers, walked down the hall with the staff sergeant who had called from downstairs. As they approached the office door, Ambassador Lime slowly shook his head from side to side, a look of awed disbelief across his face.
“I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it.” He thrust his hands forward toward Marcus and grasped the Marine’s in his own, shaking it vigorously. “You are alive! Oh, God, this is going to make some people very happy. Very happy indeed!”
Once in the office, they settled down and the ambassador filled him in on what had happened since his disappearance.
He told Marcus that after the team did not radio for the helicopter extraction unit, another team was sent in to find out what had happened. They came upon the dead at the orphanage and recovered most of the bodies, which had been stripped of all useable clothing and equipment. Three men were found to be “non-recoverable”, meaning their bodies had either been so damaged by the explosions as to be unidentifiable, or there was little trace of their remains. Marcus was one of these, as was Barclay, who had been next to him during the attack and probably took a direct hit from the RPG. Marcus had been pronounced missing and assumed dead, and his family had already been informed. They would certainly be happy to discover that he had actually survived.
After a delicious meal, Marcus was given a room at the finest hotel available in Conakry. Once settled in, Marcus called his friend Linus and told him as much as he could, asking him to pass on to his parents the news that he was alive. Linus had started to say something back, but the connection, which had been very crackly from the start, abruptly went out and he was unable to reconnect the call. He then f
ound a piece of paper and a pen and wrote two letters. The first was to his mother, the second to Lonnie.
Lonnie,
These past two months have been the hardest of my life, but I want you to know that it was the dream of seeing you again that sustained me through it all. I witnessed the most evil that men can do displayed like a parade before my eyes, but I put a stop to it. The desire to see you again, with honor, has been the sole motivating factor that led me to do what I did to not only survive, but to save the lives of those in my care.
If it were not for the vision of your beauty constantly floating before my mind, I would have had no reason to continue on in the adventure that I have endured.
I love you madly, and with extreme eagerness await the day we are together again.
Your Marine,
Your Love,
Marcus
Chapter 40
George Parks Highway
Sunshine, Alaska
20 December
03:35 Hours
Wyatt, Johnson, Wasner, and two of his SEALs landed in the state’s Blackhawk helicopter at the remote trooper post in the small town of Sunshine. The town was a fairly young settlement of about two hundred people scattered through the forest high in the mountains on the south side of the Alaska Range. In the clear, cold, starlit night, the shadowy outline of the mountains stood out against the inky darkness of the sky. High above the other peaks, like an emperor gazing upon his subjects, stood the massive mountain locally known as Denali. The literal translation of the Athabaskan name is ‘Great One’. Most Americans know it as Mount McKinley. The second tallest peak in the world, it juts skyward nearly five miles above sea level.
Wyatt borrowed a vehicle from the trooper post, a full size F250. Nestled in the eight-foot-long bed and facing toward the rear was a long track snowmobile. Both the truck and the snowmobile were painted bright white, with the blue trooper stripe and gold shield logo emblazoned on the door of the F250 and on the cowling of the snowmobile. Wyatt drove the truck. Marcus was up front in the passenger seat and the others sat in the spacious backseat with their weapons between their knees. Wyatt drove to a checkpoint at the junction of the Parks Highway and a small, unnamed road near Byers Lake.
