by Ian Slater
As the general studied his Tactical Pilotage map of the rugged 48-mile-wide, 75-mile-long Idaho panhandle that contained both Lake Pend Oreille and Priest Lake, thirty miles north-northwest of Pend Oreille, he shook his head.
“What’s up, General?” Aussie shouted over the roar of the Chinook’s engines.
Freeman’s face was creased by what his team had come to call his George C. Scott look, one of concern and hard focus. It wasn’t worry, however. Douglas Freeman tried to spend as little time as he could worrying, a devotee of the man Muslims saw as a holy prophet, and Christians, the Messiah: “Set your mind on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well. So do not be anxious about tomorrow; tomorrow will look after itself. Each day has troubles enough of its own.”
Even so, Freeman had to think ahead and Sal, seeing the general’s frown of concentration, asked, “Problem?” It was a question that an enlisted man would hardly be expected to ask a general, at least not so casually, but this SpecFor team, with the exception of Tony Ruth, had been in action together before. Besides, the easy familiarity between officers and enlisted men came naturally to such small groups of men who’d been in combat and who’d bivouacked in close quarters.
Freeman’s voice thundered over the Chinook’s combined rotor slap and engine noise. “No problem, gentlemen. No problem at all.” He looked down at Prince, the five-year-old black spaniel whose floppy ears were covered by earmuffs that Choir Williams had made especially for him, and who seemed to perk up as if reading the general’s mind.
“The first thing we need to know,” the general continued, “is which way those bastards headed off from the DARPA installation at the end of the lake. And for that answer—” He leaned forward and scratched Prince affectionately behind his ears, the dog immediately half closing his eyes in canine ecstasy. “—we need to get Prince here a scent from those terrorist creeps, if we can. That right, fella?” The general’s right hand moved from Prince’s ears to beneath his chin. Panting happily, Prince eagerly thrust his head forward, asking for more.
From the helo’s open door, the slipstream roaring like rushing water against his goggles, Freeman caught a glimpse of the densely forested mountain fastness of the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness Area that flanked Lake Pend Oreille to the east beyond the Idaho-Montana border. To his left, northwest, he could see the six-thousand-foot-high summit of Bald Mountain, and, south of the lake, Cedar Mountain. On the long, ear-shaped lake, which looked to him more like an elongated question mark than an ear, lay several rectangular shapes: DARPA’s barge out from the shore, designated DARPA ALPHA on his map; the data hut on the shoreline; and several other storage buildings scattered around the small settlement of Bayview on the ear’s lobe, with Coeur d’Alene another twenty miles to the south. Freeman also saw there was only one road leading out from the DARPA installation to Interstate 95, eight miles west of the lake. Prince’s nose was at his side, the spaniel’s eyes watering from the icy-cold wind that swept over the misty blue mass of the Cabinet Mountains and the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge beyond the lake where rivulets, born in snowcapped peaks, fed both Lake Pend Oreille and Priest Lake to the northwest.
“Gonna see a grizzly, eh?” Freeman asked Prince, who remained incommunicado as he basked in the extended chin scratch the general was giving him and the back scratch that, now that the turbulence had subsided, Choir was lavishing on him.
“Grizzly?” put in Aussie. “I certainly hope not. Terrorists are one thing, grizzly bears are something else.”
“Then,” Freeman told the team, “you’d better check your weapons, guys. Make sure you’re loaded for bear as well as scumbags.”
Salvini had selected a 22.1-pound, 49.2-inch Belgian general-purpose machine gun, or GPMG, a weapon that could fire fifty-round belts of the big 7.62 mm slugs over an effective killing range of three-quarters of a mile, should a “long punch” firefight break out.
For his part, Choir had chosen the German-made Heckler Koch general-purpose MG36, which was a lighter and shorter machine gun. The MG36, with folding stock and carrying handle, had a transparent thirty-round magazine, fired standard NATO 5.56 mm-caliber rounds, and had a kill reach of more than a third of a mile. In his pre-op briefing at Fairchild, the general had told the other seven men in his eight-man team that while the trail would most likely lead them through thick bush and forest, there would also be open alpine meadows at the higher elevations of the Bitterroot Mountains. In such places, the shorter-range Heckler Koch’s famous MP55.6-pound submachine gun was favored by most others in the team. The general’s weapon of choice was an AK-74, an updated AK-47 which he’d chosen for its relatively light weight—7.5 pounds — easy maintenance, and greater range than the Heckler Koch MP5. The general had had his AK-74’s original folding metal frame stock replaced with wood so that it could be used as a “door opener” or “skull crusher,” should the occasion arise.
As usual in the group, the general had allowed each member of the team, with the exception of Aussie, to select his own weapon. Lieutenant Johnny Lee, the multi-linguist, Gomez, and Eddie Mervyn liked the Heckler Koch MP5 navy version. With its closed bolt action, unlike its open bolt cousin that begins firing when the bolt is “triggered” forward, the navy version fires with the bolt already forward, reducing any aim-altering shoulder bump. And, while weighing only 7.7 pounds, it has an effective kill range of 328 feet firing 9 mm ammo.
It was left to Aussie Lewis, at the general’s request, to tote a standard Heckler Koch G36 assault rifle fitted with an under-barrel launcher that could fire up to ten 40 mm grenades a minute to a distance of approximately 300 yards. The eighth member of the team, Tony Ruth, an ex-Ranger who had stayed in the kind of top physical condition Freeman always demanded of his team members, came along at Aussie’s invitation. Tony Ruth had met Aussie Lewis in Iraq, in Karbala. His favorite weapon was an Italian Franchi eight-round SPAS — sporting purpose automatic shotgun.
No, Tony Ruth had told the other members of the SpecWar squad, and anyone who ever challenged him — and a lot of people had — he wasn’t any relation to Babe Ruth. Yes, he had played in the minors, and worked one game in the majors. Then Iraq came a year before his retirement. Yes, he sure did intend to go back to North Carolina and play ball, but the example of Pat Tillman, the twenty-seven-year-old offensive lineman for the Arizona Cardinals who had walked away from a $3.6-million, three-year contract in the NFL because he believed it was time to serve his country and who was killed in action in a blue-on-blue in Afghanistan in June 2003, had had a great influence on Tony Ruth, as it had on a lot of other Americans, and he’d met Douglas Freeman through Aussie not long after the SpecWar team lost a member on a SpecWar op off the “Hermit Kingdom”—the North Korean coast.
“Hey, Tony,” Aussie called out, pointing to the Franchi shotgun, “why not haul a Mossberg instead of taking that old Italian job? Holds nine rounds instead of eight. You never know when that extra cartridge—”
“Yeah—” riposted Tony. “But if you’ve already had to fire eight rounds of buckshot or door-bashing slugs, you’re in so much trouble you don’t need an extra round, you need a medic. Fast.”
“Ah-ha!” said Salvini. “He’s got you there, Aussie.”
“Oh, shut your face, wop! I’d still bet on a Mossberg.”
“You’d bet on anything,” said Sal.
“Sal’s right,” Choir Williams told Tony Ruth. “Last mission we were on, Aussie was sound asleep aboard the transport until he heard someone mention a ‘bet.’”
“That is correct,” chimed in Freeman, always happy to see such good morale en route to a mission that his gut instinct told him would stress the nerves and physical fitness of his seven fellow commandos to the max. “Aussie could hear the word ‘bet,’” Freeman said, “even if it was whispered at a rock concert.”
“I don’t go to rock concerts,” said Aussie, sniffing. “I’m more cultured than you bastards.”
“A question of good photography,” said Aussie, affecting a high-minded, dismissive air. “It wasn’t the young lady’s cleavage that interested me. It was the interpretive angle of the shot and the — ah — subtle arrangement of her wardrobe I was viewing.”
“What are you talking about?” said Salvini. “She was naked!”
“Nevertheless,” Aussie began, then paused. “Oh, you peasants wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh?” joshed Ruth. “Well, tell me, professor, what would your wife say if she’d seen you ‘viewing’?”
“Well,” Aussie answered slowly, “I think, Mr. Ruth, that she would cut me off for a month!”
Everyone laughed, though Freeman’s mirth was restrained by recalling how he might still be in the proverbial doghouse for having to leave his wife so abruptly on the mission, especially so soon after their donnybrook vis-à-vis Marte Price.
As the general reached forward to pat Prince once more, he felt the one-shot pen in his pocket. This time it wasn’t loaded with a rubber stun bullet but a lethal round. He hoped that all the other equipment in the team’s “goodies” packs, provided by DARPA, and the other off-the-shelf wares of war would be as efficient.
“Two minutes!” announced the Chinook’s loadmaster as the amber light began flashing.
“Brace!” and each of the eight commandos readied themselves for a hard landing. Choir held Prince to his chest, the dog, now strapped into his Velcro-hitched hagvar vest, happily licking Choir’s face as the Chinook’s rear wheels touched down in what sounded like a hailstorm as gravel and sand kicked up by the rotors’ fierce downdraft struck the Chinook’s fuselage.
Within a minute every man, with his pack, and Prince were on the hard ground of the DARPA base, and Freeman was being greeted by a somber-looking sheriff from Sandpoint, the wilderness resort area of about five thousand souls at the top of the lake twenty-seven miles north of the naval research station.
“Bad business,” said the sheriff glumly.
“It is,” said Freeman. “First thing I need to do is talk to the staff here at DARPA.” Away from the exhaust and dust, the general could breathe more deeply, taking in the damp coolness of the mountain lake. Prince had already been doing this, his tongue lolling expectantly, a distinct smile on his face. He loved tracking, though at the moment all he could smell was baking soda, the result of a standing order from Freeman for his men to eschew any deodorant to combat the sweating in armpit and groin. The soda, unlike deodorants, including those that commercials boasted were unscented, was neutral and would help absorb the smell of their perspiration.
“We threw up roadblocks,” the sheriff assured him, “all around the area north, south, and west of the research station. And we sent boats across to the eastern side of the lake. All sides covered. But there was nothing. Highway patrols were alerted on the Washington state, Montana, and British Columbia borders, so they didn’t get out that way. But they had mountain bikes, you know.” He pointed to where his deputy had found the mountain bike tracks up beyond the high hurricane-strength fence. “But they left them behind.”
“Which way do you think they’re headed, Sheriff? Your best guess?”
“I’d say north — Canada.”
“Yep. So would I,” said Freeman. The general paused, looking out across the metallic gray lake under the gathering gray stratus. “Everyone’s expecting them to be hightailing it in cars or a plane. How about that, Sheriff — a plane?”
“General, we shut down everything. No planes out from Sandpoint except for an emergency airlift of a hiker to Spokane. He broke his leg on one of the islands in Priest Lake farther north of here. Had to bring a float plane for him but he’s a local. I know him. ’Sides, I double-checked. Only the pilot and him aboard. Locals — know ’em both.”
Freeman slapped the sheriff on the back by way of appreciation. “You’ve done good work, Sheriff. It’ll go in my report.”
The sheriff nodded appreciatively, then added grimly, “Ten people murdered in cold blood. Like a family.”
“Ten?” queried the general. “I was told there were eleven.”
“No, seemed so at first, but one of ’em, Roberta Juarez, a technician, survived. Massive head injuries but she’s holding on. With a head injury like that, they no doubt figured she was dead.”
“I need to see her,” said the general.
“Well, first,” the sheriff told him, “you’ll need to talk to Grierson, the local M.D. He’s a tough nut. Says we can’t talk to her for days, maybe weeks, even.”
“Choir,” Freeman told the Welsh-born American. “Take Prince over to where the paratrooper bikes were abandoned after the raid. Should be good scent there.” He suddenly turned back to the sheriff. “You didn’t let anyone near the bikes, did you?”
“No, sir. Yellow-taped the area and I’ve had a deputy there since.”
“Good man.” Freeman entertained the possibility of the terrorists backpacking out. Next, he called Johnny Lee over. “Sheriff says there’s a patient, Roberta Juarez—” Freeman paused and looked back at the sheriff. “—I take it she’s Spanish-American, or is that her husband’s—”
“She’s Mexican.”
“Right,” said Freeman, and turned to Lee. “You come with me, Johnny. We’re going for another helo ride. Quick trip up to Sandpoint. Ten minutes and we’ll be there. Let’s go.” As he strode toward the chopper, he told Aussie Lewis, Salvini, Gomez, Eddie Mervyn, and Tony Ruth to take a break while Choir and Prince were checking out the abandoned mountain bikes that had so successfully been used as props in the terrorists’ attack.
CHAPTER SIX
Freeman and Lee moved quickly away from the chopper’s downdraft and the exhaust fumes that were polluting the pristine mountain air into the thick antiseptic air of Sandpoint Hospital, their Vibram boots squeaking sharply on the polished linoleum floor.
Through the glass of the intensive care unit, Freeman could see thirty-three-year-old Roberta Juarez lying in a bed, her head in a shroud of bandages. Only her left eye, her lips, and nostrils were visible, giving her an unfortunately ghoulish appearance, an impression reinforced by the fact that her badly bruised right arm was attached to an intravenous drip. It was obvious to Freeman, from his side on view of her neck, that Roberta’s hair had been shorn off in the trauma unit. Her left hand was in a cast, the doctor explained, because when she’d been shot, her left hand and arm must have taken the brunt of the fall.
“She conscious?” asked Freeman.
“In and out,” replied the young, casually dressed doctor, who, except for his stethoscope, could have passed for a golfer about to go practice his putting. Through the window at the end of the corridor, Freeman glimpsed a menacingly overcast sky. He flexed his wrist and glanced at his watch so that the young doctor would get the message that there was no time to lose. If it started to rain, it would wash away the marauders’ scent. There were other ways, of course, to track them — broken twigs and brush — but the best would be for Prince to get the scent from the abandoned bikes and go from there. Since Freeman’s call to Eleanor Prenty, the word had gone out to the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and the Bureau of Land Management in northern Idaho to give “all assistance possible to General Freeman’s team.”
“Doctor, I need to speak with Ms. Juarez as soon as possible. Find out if she can tell us anything that might—”
“No way,” said the athletic-looking doctor, planting himself imperiously in front of the door. “This patient is in critical condition and I—”
“Johnny,” the general told his SpecFor translator. “Give me a strip.”
Lee whipped out a plastic cuff strip from one of his battle dress uniform’s many pockets.
“What the hell—” began the doctor, his face flushed with shock and anger. “Nurse!”
Freeman’s face was an inch from the young physician
’s. “Listen, Grierson, I’m on the trail of terrorists who murdered — I say again, murdered—ten Americans because they wanted something that’s so classified that I don’t even know what it is yet. But I do know one thing, and that is that Roberta Juarez is probably the only person still alive who saw the killers. Anything, anything she can tell me could be vital not only to my finding those sons of bitches but to the security of the United States. Now step aside or I’ll arrest you under the Patriot Act, Section 11B—‘directly or indirectly giving aid and comfort to the enemy.’”
“This is outrageous!” said Grierson. “I’m not moving. Nurse!”
Freeman felled him with one blow.
“Cuff him, Johnny!”
The general stepped over the physician, who was gasping for air like a landed fish, and opened the door to Intensive Care. Roberta was moving her head slightly from side to side, moaning. Perhaps the kerfuffle, the general thought, with young Dr. Grierson had brought her around or had disturbed her somnolence sufficiently that she might hear him. He identified himself gently but firmly, not knowing whether she was hearing him. Had she seen anything that might help them identify the killers?
No answer. No response at all.
He pressed the question respectfully but insistently. “The men who attacked you, Ms. Juarez?” Freeman could hear the doctor swearing. Johnny Lee had him cuffed to a hallway chair and told him that if he didn’t want to be thumped again he’d better be quiet. A nurse saw them, advanced, stopped, then turned and ran back to her station to call security.
