by Scott Conrad
“Any ranger stations?”
“Brad, I just don’t know. I called you as soon as I got off the phone with the manager of Stephan Lodge.”
Brad understood the Arctic well, and he knew that anyone stranded and unprepared even in early spring conditions, during which the temperatures usually ranged in the low teens to the mid-thirties in April, only lasted about forty-eight hours even if they were not injured. Pete was well trained in arctic survival, but Brad had no idea what kind of survival gear Pete might have with him. The Lodge generally provided the gear, including the baggy parkas that retained body heat even in the lowest of temperatures. Time would be critical if Pete was in a jam.
"Who's leading the search and rescue?"
"Alaska State Troopers," Ving replied sourly. They both knew the troopers were stretched far too thin in the wilds of Alaska.
“Did you call Jessica and tell her yet?”
“No, not yet.”
"Prep a mission Ving, how soon can we be wheels up?"
"Who do you want?"
“We’re going to need our own pilot, just in case. See if you can reach Tom Riggins.” He hesitated a moment. “Go ahead and get Jared and Jessica too."
“Jessica?” Ving asked. “Why in the hell do you want to take Jessica?”
Jessica was Brad's younger cousin, and not someone Brad had ever wanted on a mission… not that the slender blonde wasn’t competent. Ving knew for a fact that the beautiful athletic blonde was an adventuress with mad skills; he’d seen her in action. Her beauty belied her capabilities, but it still seemed odd as hell that Brad would want to take her to Alaska of all places. Ving had trained there extensively, and he hated it. The place was damned pretty in the movies and on television, but it was no place for a sun loving black man.
Since retiring as a Force Recon Marine four years before, Brad Jacobs had made a living as a seeker. Even though Brad just turned thirty-eight he stayed in peak physical condition. He worked out religiously. He possessed a forceful look of self confidence in his piercing green eyes that came from his years of experience dealing with life and death situations. With his short blonde hair, white skin, and square jaw, women often told him he looked like a handsome movie star, but he never took them seriously. He enjoyed plenty of short term girlfriends but he never managed to stay at home long enough to form a long term relationship even if he’d wanted one.
He was dedicated to his work. Respect, honor, and hard work were more than just words to him; they were a way of life. He liked the feeling of really making a difference. He was known by his friends as someone with incredible resourcefulness and integrity, and he carried a well-known reputation for believing that justice was something everyone deserved.
Often he worked as a bounty hunter, and when the money was right, he tracked down and located missing persons who had vanished while in dangerous countries that conventional law enforcement agencies shied away from. When he took one of these latter missions, he always enlisted the help of selected men he trusted and had previously served with. Ving was always first on his list… the two of them went way back, and they had been around the block with each other many times.
The others were professionals he knew he could count on. Pete was one of those men, and the best all-around pilot Brad had ever met. He recruited Pete frequently for his private operations. Brad made a point of taking a pilot on every job, even if their basic plan didn't require one, and Pete could fly anything that moved through the air. Aside from being a handy fellow to have his back in a fight, he was good insurance.
Besides working as a bounty hunter, he also worked recently as a hostage retrieval expert for international corporations to retrieve high level executives who had been abducted for ransom in foreign countries. He was earning a world-wide reputation as a man who could track down anyone anywhere and bring them back in one piece. It made no difference if it was a dangerous felon who skipped bail, or an innocent victim who had been kidnapped half way around the world, Brad put everything he had into every job he accepted. That was something he learned at a very young age from his father. It had served him well.
"Why Jessica?" Ving repeated.
"Because I’m sure she will insist on showing up anyway," Brad responded. "Charlie Dawkins is her newest flame, and I’d rather have her close by where I can keep an eye on her than have her running around the wilds of Alaska on her own... and you know as well as I do that she would do exactly that if I tried to exclude her from this. Hell, she might even be useful… she’s a better skier than I am." He thought for a moment. "On second thought, I'll call Jessica," he said quietly. “You call everybody else."
A woman with a spirit of adventure like Jessica was not likely to sit idly by and wait for someone to find her missing boyfriend. Brad knew she would end up right in the middle of things if he didn’t take her along. If he told her to stay at home and wait for him to call, she’d be on the next commercial flight to Talkeetna and he’d have no way of stopping her. He’d rescued her enough times to anticipate her reactions.
"What kind of weapons and how many?" Ving asked. "We’re only talking Alaska this time. It should be a little less rowdy than Africa was. Do you just want me to take hunting rifles?"
"Ving you know better than to ask me that."
Ving smiled. He already knew what Brad's response would be before he’d asked the question. One thing they both learned as Marines was to always be prepared, to anticipate the unexpected... particularly when it came to challenges and potential adversaries. Readiness was their stock in trade. Brad never went looking for trouble, but somehow it always seemed to find him. His standing rule was that he always went fully armed with military weapons on every mission, even if it was only a simple search and rescue on American soil.
"OK," Ving said. "I’ll give you an update at 0600. We should be ready to go wheels up by 0800… provided we can get the others up and moving by then."
“Ving?”
“Yeah, Brad?”
“Use my ‘War Chest’ credit card for whatever you need.”
“Got it Brad!” The ‘War Chest’ credit card was for use in situations where Brad was footing the bill for an op or when they were awaiting funds from a client. It had come in handy on numerous occasions, and Ving carried one of the plastic cards in his wallet. It was a measure of how much Brad trusted him.
As Brad hung up the phone the enormity of the situation struck him like a ton of bricks. Alaska is one of the most dangerous environments on earth, even in the early spring. Perilous terrain, extreme temperatures, and savage, hungry animals coming off a long cold winter were only the most obvious of perils. Even for an experienced arctic survivalist, the risks were staggering.
Cold injuries such as frostbite were the norm rather than the exception, and while most people were not aware of it, heat stroke was more common than hypothermia because people who didn’t know better tried to overdress for the cold. The secret to staying warm enough to survive in the Arctic was not the amount of clothes one wore, but the amount of dead air space trapped in the clothing and keeping the dry, biting wind from ones exposed skin.
Dehydration was another unexpected gift of the Arctic. Dry, cold air sucked the moisture from mouth, nostrils, and lungs at an alarming rate… and people who tried to use snowmelt for water replenishment were in for a rude shock. A five gallon bucket of dry powdery snow yielded perhaps a half a teacup of drinkable water, and the pure snowmelt leached the minerals from your body, keeping it from rehydrating your body efficiently. Melting snow for water in the Arctic was an exercise in futility and frustration.
Brad had hated the U.S. Army’s Northern Warfare Training Course at Fort Greeley, Alaska which the Corps had seen fit to send him to, but he gained an enormous amount of knowledge at the school, and he’d been provided the opportunity to put it in actual practice. It had come in handy before and it would come in doubly handy now.
Pete was not just a former Marine he had served with. Pete was one of his be
st friends, and Brad was the kind of man who didn't hesitate to act when one of his friends was in trouble. No matter what the cost, nothing could keep him from helping a friend in real trouble.
He knew less about Charles Dawkins. From the time he had learned that Charlie was dating his favorite niece Jessica Paul, it had been Brad’s intention to run a background check on the man, although he knew Jessica would be mad as hell when she found out about it. He never found the time, and it hadn’t seemed really important because Pete had taken to the man right away. Pete had good instincts which Brad trusted almost as much as he trusted his own, but there was something about Charlie that bothered him and he just couldn't put his finger on it.
JESSICA
He didn’t call Jessica. He dressed quickly, grabbed his arctic bag from the hall closet, and drove to her apartment. The lights were out in her apartment when he arrived at the plush Dallas building, and he dreaded waking her up this time of the morning with bad news… but he dreaded trying to explain why he hadn’t even more. If he waited until daylight to tell her, she’d probably take his scalp. He often thought of her as his ‘little cousin’, but at times like these he had to force himself to remember her facing the Séléka in the Congo, a rifle in her hand and an expression of cool professionalism on her pretty face. She was, in fact, one very cool, competent warrior in the face of hostile fire.
He forced himself to calm down and knocked firmly on her door. To his surprise, she answered it quickly, wearing an old, ratty looking terry cloth robe that she had worn as far back as he could remember. He knew she had plenty of money from a trust fund and that her father, his Uncle Jack, gave her an allowance as well. She drove a brand new Porsche, and it seemed to him odd that she would keep wearing such a ratty old robe at home when she could afford anything she wanted.
“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” she asked. She knew something was wrong and she stood in the doorway without moving or asking him inside.
“Jessica…” he started.
“It’s Charlie, isn’t it?” She wasn’t crying, but he could tell she was close to tears.
“Let me in Jessica, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She seemed startled, and then she composed herself. She opened the door and indicated the kitchen table. “Sit down. I’ll make us some coffee and then you’ve got to tell me all about it.”
He watched as she went through her coffee ritual, carefully rinsing the coffee pot with cold water, meticulously measuring out the proper amount of beans and grinding them thoroughly in a deluxe grinder that must have cost the equivalent of a month’s salary for a private in the Corps. She poured the water into the fancy copper coffee maker and removed delicate looking china cups and saucers from a cabinet while she waited for the brew to filter into the glass coffee pot. When it was done, she poured carefully and brought both cups and saucers to the table where she sat down across from him. She took a sip, as did he, and then clasped her hands in front of her.
“Please. Just tell me he isn’t dead.” Her eyes were pleading silently.
“The plane he and Pete were in went down in Alaska. They never reached Stephan Lake Lodge. Ving’s alerting a crew and trying to get more information right now. I know the Alaska State Troopers are in charge of rescue operations Jessica, but I swear, I don’t know anything else.”
“You’re going up there?”
“Of course I’m going up there… and I’ve come to pick you up and take you with me.” She was out of the chair and hugging him tightly before he could even take another sip of coffee. He hadn’t seen any tears, but he could feel the wetness on his neck.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t thank me,” Brad said drily. “You’ll change your mind when we get there. It’s colder than a bucket of penguin poop up there right now.”
She pulled back from him, cool, calm and collected and with no tears visible. “I guess I’d better get to packing.”
“Don’t pack a lot and make sure everything is bulky and oversized. Remember that dead air space is the best insulator you can have. We’ll get parkas and vapor barrier boots up there.”
“I remember how to dress in the Arctic,” she said primly. “Remember? I had the best teacher in the world.”
He grinned. He’d taken her on a cruise to Alaska when she turned eighteen, and they visited a ski resort when the cruise ship had finally docked. Then something clicked inside his mind like the last tumbler settling into place in a lock. The robe she was wearing had been his gift to her, something to wear in the cabin on the cruise ship because the one she brought with her was a peignoir and he’d felt uncomfortable being around her when she was wearing the flimsy garment.
Jessica saw that he was staring at her robe. “Yeah, it’s the same old one.”
“My god Jessica, you ought to throw that ratty old thing out and get yourself something decent to wear.”
“Nope,” she said with a brilliant smile. “I’m keeping this one. After all, someone I cherish gave it to me.” She bent to kiss his nose and then she turned and walked to her bedroom to pack.
Cherish. Brad felt a lump rise in his throat.
CHAPTER THREE
MISSION PREP
Day 2 0330 hours CDST
Ving's first call when laying on a mission for Brad was usually to Hank Guzman, an old friend who previously worked logistics both in the military and the CIA. Hank was an old military intelligence and logistics buddy that Ving had known for over twenty years. He had worked for the CIA and two other government agencies he was not allowed to talk about. Hank was semi-retired, but he had all the right contacts in all the right places. The man was the best Black Ops logistics specialist Ving had ever known and was still a tremendous resource.
Usually Ving worked backwards, using completion of the mission as a starting point and planning everything back to the initial departure time so he could ensure that they had taken everything they would need along with them. This time, as was so often the case, he didn’t have that luxury so he relied on Brad’s S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure.)
When any military unit works together for any length of time, they develop an S.O.P., which they use as a sort of shorthand to save time in getting an operation off the ground. There was an S.O.P. for air travel (including procedures for transporting weapons legally on commercial flights), another for waterborne operations, and so on. Ving only had the sketchiest outline in his head concerning this rescue mission, but he had multiple S.O.P.s that should cover it and he dove into his planning headfirst.
Ving reached for the phone and dialed Hank’s number. The phone rang three times and then he heard a click, followed by Hank’s voice.
“I’m unable to take your call right now, but your call is very important to me. At the sound of the tone, please leave your name and number and I will return your call as soon as I am able.” There was a click, then a beep, and then Ving left a terse message. After a few minutes, he dialed another number, Hank’s beeper, and then punched in his own phone number followed by ‘9-1-1.’ That should get Hank off the dime.
Ving's next call was to Jared. Jared was a highly decorated and retired Force Recon Marine sniper. He was a member of Brad's regular team and played a key role in most of their previous private missions. On their last mission to Africa he took a bullet in the shoulder. It had been several months and Jared was fully healed but had not been on a mission since. The phone rang four times and then went to voicemail. Ving left him an urgent message and then did the same on Jared’s beeper, adding 9-1-1 at the end just as he did with Hank.
Two strikes, not a good omen. Ving turned his mind back to his planning. He knew that he and Brad both kept different duffel bags stashed in their homes, bags packed for different climates so that they could leave at a moment’s notice. Ving had labeled his bags A, B, C, and D. The A bag for tropical climate, B for desert, C for a temperate climate, and D was for cold weather. Clothing and cold weather gear settled, his
mind turned to weapons.
He realized they would have to travel light in the likely event they might end up on foot in the Alaska high country. He made a mental note to contact David Hansen next at the Northern Warfare Training Center annex at Black Rapids, near Fort Greeley, about getting an ahkio (ahkio is a Finnish word derived from the Lappish word ‘akja,’ for an open, canoe-shaped sled. The ahkio has been adopted by the military as a device enabling over-snow movement of essential survival equipment by ground troops because of the extreme conditions of cold weather warfare because the load is too heavy to backpack. The ahkio currently in use is constructed of light wood, aluminum, or fiberglass and weighs nearly twenty-five pounds. It can carry one to two hundred pounds of gear and it can be pulled easily by a man on skis or snowshoes), skis, and snowshoes to the airfield at Talkeetna.
David was an old friend from the Special Operations community, and he not only had access to the equipment they would need, he’d be happy to help them. Pete saved his ass a couple of times, extracting him from some pretty intense situations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ving decided that everyone could use their own personal weapons, prototype M4A1s equipped with bull barrels and suppressors. He picked them up through another friend when the team had gone to the Central African Republic to find Jessica and bring her home. Jared carried an M40A5 Sniper Rifle and all of them carried M45 MEUSOC handguns as a sidearm. He made a note to bring three extra rifles from his personal collection… one for Jessica and a couple of spares. A handful of ordnance they probably would never need could be carried in a satchel. They were unlikely to need the hand grenades, but the flash bangs might come in handy if they needed to chase away a grizzly or a pack of wolves that hunted in the interior.
The next item on his agenda was transportation. Alaska was actually one of the easiest states to transport weapons into. They loved tourists and they absolutely welcomed hunters. The easiest method of getting the weapons into Alaska was to have the team pack and register them as luggage. The ordnance would be concealed in a crate with the gear they wouldn’t have time to acquire in Alaska.
