By Stephen Windwalker, Publisher of Planet iPad &
Editor of Kindle Nation Daily ©Kindle Nation Daily 2011
If you've been a subscriber to for a while you already know you can discover some great reading with our generous Free Kindle Nation Shorts excerpts.
But this week we are taking things one giant step further. In addition to offering us a riveting 20,000-word excerpt from his extreme adventure page-turner 65 Below, author Basil Sands is giving away free Kindles!
First, let's talk about a great, suspenseful read from a
fearless storyteller:After twenty years hunting terrorists under orders to "render harmless", USMC Master Sergeant Marcus Orlando Johnson, Mojo to his friends, settles into a quiet rural retirement on his childhood home in the Alaskan backwoods. But the idyllic retirement is shattered when Marcus comes across soldiers of America's staunchest enemy who are about to unleash a nightmarish biological weapon on the world from the most unexpected of places. With the help of his ex-fiancee, State Trooper Lonnie Wyatt, and his old special operations buddy Harley Wasner they race to stop a potentially devastating terrorist attack with worldwide implications but even nature is against them as the temperatures plummet to 65 below.
Originally only available as a podcast audiobook, 65 Below developed an audience of tens of thousands of listeners around the world. The text version includes new scenes and additional characters not in the original audio.
"Basil Sands has a knack for blending action and intrigue in an all-too realistic setting. In Karl's Last Flight, the future is reminiscent of our recent past. I just hope there are heroes like Basil's heroes fighting on our side. "
-Evo Terra, founder of Podiobooks.com
"Sands is fearless in his storytelling, and tireless in his quest to connect directly with his audience. Big Publishing? Watch out for this guy." Scott Sigler, NYT Bestselling author of Infected, Contagious, and Ancestor
"Basil Sands is one awesome writer, penning stories pumped with enough adrenaline that you'll suffer from insomnia until you read the last word. This is one writer not to be missed." - Jeremy Robinson, author of PULSE and INSTINCT
Scroll down to begin reading the excerpt
Click here to purchase the entire book from Amazon.
And while you're at it,
don't miss this opportunity
to win a brand new Kindle!
Here's the set-up, as he provided it to us:
Buy 65 Below in between January 1st and March 31st 2011 and be entered to win a new Kindle WiFi reader! For every thousand initial entries I'll be giving away a brand new Kindle 3 eReader! No limit on how many I will give away!
To enter the contest email a copy of your Amazon order number to kindle@basilsands.com.
Want more entries?
Get up to 10 extra entriesin the drawing. After the initial entry do the following:
4 extra entries: Go to www.basilsands.com and from the comment page send a comment with the answer to this question:
"What military organization was Temebe a veteran of?"
4 extra entries:
Get four extra entries for leaving a review or comment at the purchase pages:
Amazon.com
Smashwords.com
BarnesAndNoble.com
And three more for leaving a comment at my website
Basilsands.com
That makes for up to 11 entries in the contest to win a free Kindle 3 eReader! What are you waiting for?
--Basil Sands
An Excerpt from65 Below
A novel by Basil Sands
Copyright © 2010 by Basil Sands and published here with his permission.
Chapter 1
Suburban Neighborhood
Seattle Washington
June 16th
19:25 Hours
The knife was razor-sharp. Shock morphed into terror as Michael realized first that he could make no sound, then that he could not breathe. There was no pain, but he knew something was very wrong. He reached up to grab his throat. When his hand touched his neck, his head flopped at an awkward angle. Blood jetted upward in two powerful streams, spattering against the ceiling and walls with rhythmic pulses that left abstract patterns, symbolizing his quickly draining life.
From Nikola's perspective, Michael stood upright for a long time, longer than he had thought possible. He had slit many throats in his life. Most grasped their throat and collapsed, or just crumpled and died. Nikola stared back in amusement.
"Don't look at me like that, Michael. You killed yourself," Nikola said. "Did you actually think I would let you lead the infidel here, then just allow you to walk away?"
Michael's lips moved in a soundless response.
"Sorry, I didn't hear what you said."
His eyelids fluttered in rapid spasms. Blood spurted in a final massive geyser. The dying man's eyes rolled back and at long last he collapsed to the floor. Blood continued to ooze from his half-severed neck, soaking into the fabric of the old carpet. Seconds later, red and blue strobes of police and FBI vehicles flashed on the street outside. Nikola called out to the other men in the house.
"Now is your time, brothers!"
The response came with the sound of shattering glass. A moment, later a burst of automatic weapon fire exploded from upstairs. Nikola glanced out the window toward the mass of police cars. An officer rose from behind a patrol car to shoot. His skull burst in a cloud of red, spraying goo on the men behind him. His body tumbled backward onto the pavement. A medic ran to the downed officer, and all hell broke loose on the house. Every weapon in the mass of police officers and FBI agents exploded to life at once.
Nikola reached for a black box on the coffee table. He picked it up and set it on the dead man's chest. With two flicks of a finger, he armed the high-explosive magnesium bomb. It would leave almost no trace of the bodies, and incinerate everything it came in contact with. Wood, flesh, glass, even metal. The houses on either side would likely also be destroyed. In sixty seconds, the other men in the house would join the legions of martyrs who had gone before them, whether they realized it or not.
Nikola stepped into the kitchen and entered the pantry. He yanked a metal handle on the floor and lifted the crawl space access, then ducked into the darkness. Dust and dryer lint scratched at his throat and forced a sneeze out of his nose. He scurried toward the outer foundation wall on his hands and knees. The gravel surface cut into his palms. He found the small escape tunnel and slithered in on his belly. The narrow space was barely wide enough for his thick frame. He fast-crawled ten meters until reaching the Seattle sewer system access tunnel. The air flew from his lungs as a jolt of hot compressed air shot him out of the tiny tunnel, slamming him against the far wall of the sewer. His ears screamed against the blast of sound.
Heat waves seared his clothes as he sprinted through the barely lit tunnel. He scrambled up a ladder, loosened the access cover, and climbed out onto a seldom-used bike trail, then vanished into the evening twilight.
Chapter 2
Richardson HighwayEast of Fairbanks, Alaska
17 December
16:00 Hours
"Damn! When it gets dark out here, it's dark as death."
Eugene Wyatt drove as fast as conditions allowed down the Richardson Highway in his beige Ford F250 Crew Cab pickup, with the Tanana Valley Electric Cooperative logo emblazoned on the doors. It was only four in the afternoon, but the late December sun had already long descended, leaving the land in total inky blackness. His three-year-old Golden Retriever, Penny, sat on the passenger side of the wide bench seat. She turned and stared out the window apparently not into the conversation. The dog's breath shot a burst of steam onto the frigid glass a few inches away every time she exhaled. Her tongue hung limply over the teeth of her open mouth.
On any typical evening, there would have been brightly lit signs atop tall poles in front of the gas stations. He'd usually see neon beer advertisements pulsing blue, red, and yellow from within the windows of busy bars as he passed through the small city of North Pole, then the even smaller town of Moose Creek. Tonight, only the glow of candles and oil lamps flickered dimly between the curtains of the scattering of homes along the highway. The power was out, everywhere.
Eugene looked at Penny, who stared transfixed out the truck window. The frost from her breath created a ring of ice crystals on the glass she appeared to be studying. The weather had warmed up significantly in the past few days after an unseasonal cold snap that held the land at negative fifty for several weeks. The red mercury line on the thermometer now hovered at a livable zero degrees Fahrenheit.
Eugene remembered the line a comedian had used on TV the night before.
If it's zero degrees, does that mean there's no temperature?
The humor of the line dissipated fast. There had never been an outage like this in Eugene's thirty years in Alaska's electricity business. At first, the authorities thought it was a local failure within the Tanana Valley Cooperative area. It wasn't long before they discovered it was much bigger.
The phone company went out at the same time. Cellular towers failed. The whole of the Interior region of Alaska, an area the size of New York State, was thrown back into the 19th century in an instant.
The only places that had not gone completely dark were the hospitals, airport control tower, and the Public Safety Emergency Operations Center. Those systems had automatic physical disconnect from the main power lines, taking them completely off the grid until the main power returned.
Once the Tanana Valley Electric Cooperative technicians had gotten established with satellite phones and were able to communicate with public safety and the other electrical utilities throughout the state, they were surprised to discover that the outage covered nearly a third of the land mass of the state. Every city on the shared power grid had gone dark at about four-thirty that morning.
The problem, the technicians agreed, was somewhere in the Tanana Valley area, since the outage had started there. Anchorage, four hundred miles to the south, went dark nearly five minutes after the lights turned out in Fairbanks, the Golden Heart city.
Eugene scrunched his eyebrows in contemplation as he went back over the details for the hundredth time that day.
Every city on the grid goes out all at the same time, and we can't find a single point of failure. The talk radio guys are going to eat us alive on this.
The previous summer, several of the most popular AM talk radio hosts had "prophesied" that just such an event would occur if the state went through with connecting the "Electrical Intertie" system. Now they had fodder to boost their ratings for the next six months. Such talk would no doubt fuel massive amounts of legislation and investigation, and probably lawsuits without end.
Penny turned and looked at Eugene. She cocked her head sideways, as if she was trying to read his mind. Then, in apparent exasperation at the enormity of it all, she sighed and lay across the seat, putting her head on his lap.
An unusual number of consecutive disasters had wracked Alaska in the past year. A late spring thaw meant that crops were not put in until the end of June, resulting in a scant harvest by the time September's temperatures dropped back to freezing. A particularly busy forest fire season in July was followed in August by a major flood along the Tanana River. Then there was the Halloween earthquake.
A 9.1 on the Richter scale, it was centered about one hundred miles north of Salt Jacket. That massive tremblor had turned the ground into Jell-O for almost thirty seconds while kids were out trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Buildings swayed as far as Japan and Siberia. The shock waves rocked seismographs in Chile and South Africa. A few weeks after the earthquake, there came an unexpected deep freeze, which gripped the Interior in its icy fingers six weeks earlier than usual.
Eugene gently stroked Penny behind the ears. The dog's golden brown hair shimmered reflectively in the pale green glow of the dashboard lights. He spoke his thoughts aloud in hopes that something he heard himself say would make sense.
"All systems were fine. No icing anywhere. No lines down. No surges reported anywhere on the grid. No earthquakes or abnormal aurora activity. Not even a brown-out. The crazy thing just turned off. Well, puppy, I have no idea."
The whispery soft sound of the dog's breath drifted quietly from the seat beside him. She had fallen asleep. He continued to the small wilderness community of Salt Jacket, forty miles east of Fairbanks.
Although sparsely populated, Salt Jacket was home to one of the largest, most powerful electrical substations in the Interior Region. It transferred electricity that powered huge sections of the pipeline and funneled thousands of watts to a series of military training facilities at the backside of Eielson Air Force Base.
Even though two other TVEC crews had checked it earlier in the day, as maintenance chief for the second largest power company in the state, Eugene felt obligated to recheck each of the four largest stations himself. More than anything, the drive to the last station in Salt Jacket gave him time to think things over again.
Eugene turned north from the highway onto Johnson Road, a bumpy, twisting chip-and-tar paved road which wound back nearly thirty miles until it abruptly ended in the vast wilderness of the Eielson Air Force Base training area. The substation was only seven miles up the road, near the pipeline's Pump Station Eight.
A mile past the pump station, a chain link fence marked the end of the civilian-owned portion of Johnson Road. Signs restricted access to the back section of the Air Force Base. It was not much of a restriction, though, as the gate generally stood open, frozen in deep piles of plowed snow.
As Eugene rounded a sharp bend in the road, a sudden bright flash of headlights blinded him. Another vehicle straddled the centerline of the road, barrelling toward him. He pulled the steering wheel sharply to the right to avoid hitting the oncoming truck that lurched hard to the other side of the road. Penny leaped up in surprise from his lap and slid uncontrollably to the floor in front of the passenger seat.
In the split-second when the side of the other truck crossed in front of his, Eugene saw the Tanana Valley Electrical Co-op emblem on its side and a large black number 48 on the fender panel just in front of the driver's door before the truck sped off into the night.
"Whoa! Good Lord!" Eugene exclaimed, his face reddening as he processed the knowledge that he was nearly killed by one of his own employees. "Who the hell was driving that thing?"
He considered chasing down truck number forty-eight to fire the driver on the spot, but decided it would be wiser to find out who it was first. He reached for the satellite phone that hung from a peg on the dashboard and hit the speed dial for his main office. A young man's voice answered, "TVEC control center."
"This is Chief Wyatt. Who the hell is driving number forty eight?" he shouted into the receiver. His Oklahoma drawl was still strong after three decades in the North. "That idiot almost drove me into a snow bank out here on Johnson Road."
"Uh, sorry sir, I don't know who's driving forty eight. Give me a second to look over the log real quick."
There was a pause on the line. The young man came back.
"Sorry, Chief, nobody's driving number forty-eight. It's still right here in the yard, according to the logbook. No...wait...there's a note here that says it's at Magnuson's Body Shop, getting some work done on it."
"Who is this, Franklin?"
"Yes, sir."
"Son, you'd better check on that thing and make sure it's still at Magnuson's. And if it ain't, call the police and report it stolen, because I swear, it was number forty-eight that almost hit me head on just now."
"Aye, aye, sir...I mean, yes, sir," Franklin replied.
"And knock off that Navy talk, son. You're back in the real world now."
"Sorry, Mr. Wyatt. Six years of it kind of grew on me."
There was a loud "beep beep" in Eugene's telephone handset.
"Yeah, well, check on that vehicle for me ASAP. Let Andy know that I'm here at the Salt Jacket station and will call back in after I get a look around. My batteries are getting low and I left the car charger in my office, so I'm going to get off now. Out here."
Damn. It's a good thing I didn't chase them yahoos. They might have been a couple of doped up gangbangers who would have killed me for kicks.
The tires of the F250 crunched on the snow as he pulled off Johnson Road and up to the entrance of the Salt Jacket substation. Eugene's headlights illuminated the heavy gauge chain-link fence. It appeared to be securely locked. He shut off the engine and opened the door of the truck.
Before he could step down, Penny leaped over him. She landed on the ground with acrobatic lightness. Eugene stepped down after the dog. Penny took several steps, then spread her hind legs and peed on the ground a few yards from the truck. Once finished, she took off at a full run into the woods.
"Hey!" he shouted after the dog. "Don't get lost! We're only going to be here a few minutes."
Eugene pulled the fur-trimmed hood of his parka over his head to hold out the biting cold that nipped at his ears. His cheeks stung from the cold. The temperature had dropped since he left Fairbanks.
Eugene approached the fence. He put his hand out and tugged at the handle. It was securely locked. He reached up to press the silver metallic buttons on the battery-operated combination pad. Just as his finger touched the first number, an unexpected deep whir and throb made his heart jump.
The security lights of Pump Station Eight exploded to life on the other side of the tall trees that obscured it from view. It had been so dark in that direction that he had forgotten how close the pipeline was. Eugene regained his composure and finished punching the combination into the keypad. The gate slowly clanked open. He entered the compound and was heading for the small control shed when a firm voice called out behind him.
"Can I help you, sir?"
He turned to see the bright beam of a flashlight pointed at his face. Below the beam, Eugene made out the shape of the muzzle of a weapon.
"Who are you?" he called back.
"Pipeline Security. Show me some ID or you are going to have to leave."
He unzipped the top of his parka and pulled out the ID card strung around his neck. These guys were not stereotypical shopping mall security rent-a-cops. Doyon Services, who held the contract for pipeline security in perpetuity, only hired the most professional and potentially most dangerous guards to fulfill their role in protecting one of the country's most valued resources. Most of these were former military police, and many had served as Marines or Special Forces. They were paid almost as much as the "security consultants" the government used as mercenaries in the war on terror, and they were worth every dime of it.
The guard moved forward, shining his light on Eugene's badge. Once he was close enough to read it, he said "Good evening, Mr. Wyatt. I'm Officer Bannock, Watch Corporal tonight up at Eight."
A single mercury lamp on a tall pole above the substation started to hum. It slowly began to glow to life, but still provided almost no light.
"Do you mind if we step into the shed and I turn on the switch in here?" said Eugene.
"Sure, go ahead."
Bannock pointed his flashlight to the door so Eugene could see to put his key in it.
Eugene opened the door and stepped inside. He flipped a switch to the right of the door as he entered. A bright fluorescent light flickered to life. The ballast inside the light fixture added another layer to the increasingly loud hum of the station's massive copper coils and the room's numerous devices.
The back wall of the room was a mass of gauges and switches, set in floor to ceiling gray steel casings. Whenever Eugene walked into one of these rooms, he thought of the fifties science fiction movies from his childhood in which such devices lined the wall of Buck Rogers' spaceship. A table and two chairs that looked like they were probably WWII surplus sat in one corner, and a small desk with a LCD computer terminal was crammed in the opposite corner.
Once inside the lighted room, Eugene turned to see the guard's face. Bannock was a tall, muscular man in his early forties, retired military by his demeanor. An MP5 submachine gun hung over his shoulder from a black nylon strap. He wore it comfortably, as if it were a part of his body. The long, black Maglite had been placed back in its holster on his pistol belt.
"I guess those other two technicians must've fixed the power just before you got here, eh?" Bannock asked.
"You saw them?" Eugene responded. "What'd they look like?"
"Yeah, I saw them. Two white males, in their late twenties or early thirties. They showed valid looking Tanana Valley ID cards. One was named Adem, the other was Nikola."
"Did you see what they were doing?"
"Negative. I heard the noise over here during our shift change and came by just as they were closing the gate. I heard them talking, but I was too far away to understand the details of their conversation. They weren't speaking English at first, but when they heard my boots on the snow, they switched immediately."
"What language were they speaking?"
"Albanian."
"Albanian?" Eugene asked. "How the hell would you know it was Albanian?"
"I retired from the Special Forces three years ago. Knee injury. I did several years in the Baltics, and had a lot of contact with northern Albanians among the Kosovo Muslim Militias."
"Muslim Militias?" Eugene replied. "Are you saying these guys are terrorists?"
"I didn't say that specifically. But I wouldn't rule it out."
"Well, I'll be damned," Eugene said. "What else was suspicious about them?"
The guard paused for a moment, and then said, "It'd be easier to list anything not suspicious about them. There was serious bad tension around them. They had just left and I was heading back to the pump station to make a report to send in to the troopers when I heard you pull in. I had thought it was them returning, so I came back."
"Yeah, they almost ran into me head-on down the road a ways," Eugene said.
Bannock nodded in reply. "Well, Mr. Wyatt, I've got to be getting back and file a report of contact. Everything I mentioned to you the hard facts, that is will be in my log back at the station, if you want to see it."
"Thanks. I'll be gone in five minutes."
Officer Bannock turned around and started to open the door when Eugene called out.
"Hey, Bannock, could you do me a favor?"
Bannock turned back. "Sure, what do you need?"
"If those men return, or for that matter, if anyone comes in here for the next week or two, could you let your guys back there know to give me a ring on my cell phone?" He handed Bannock his card.
"No problem," the officer replied. "You know, we could do even more than just call you. We have some pretty good surveillance gear at our disposal. With your station being in such close proximity to the pipeline, I could justify monitoring your property for our own security reasons. All I need is your permission, and we can set up round-the-clock electronic surveillance."
"Thanks. That'd be greatly appreciated," Eugene replied. "If your boss gives you a hard time, tell him to call me. Me and him go back a ways."
"Have a good night, sir."
Bannock raised his fingers to his forehead in a relaxed salute and walked out into the darkness.
Eugene logged onto the computer on the corner desk and accessed the systems report in hope of finding something that would give him any clue. The last line before the system went down showed everything running normally at the half hour checkpoint. The next lines, which had been appended upon system reboot, read:
Abnormal Shutdown 0430 hrs 081217
Error Code: 000 Unknown Source Disrupt
What the hell? The computer doesn't even know what happened.
Eugene printed the report and rose from the desk. He zipped his parka back up, turned off the lights, and then headed out the door into the now brightly lit area outside. The mercury lamp had finally reached its full intensity and cast a pale white glow onto the building and equipment around him. White steam billowed from his nose and mouth as he exhaled in the frozen air.
From where Eugene stood, he turned to gaze around the yard. He saw no sign of physical damage. If there had been a transformer fire, it would have been on the report. Even if it weren't, he would be able to smell the tell-tale odor of burned electrical equipment, which he did not.
As he walked toward his truck on the other side of the gate, Penny slowly trotted back from the woods and waited beside the door of her master's vehicle. She sat down and her tail wagged happily, sweeping the snow behind her in a doggy version of a snow angel.
"My goodness, that's a good dog. You came back without me calling" he said aloud to his canine companion.
Chapter 3
Phantom-like wisps of white steam rose from the thickly insulated tan canvas fabric of the Carhartts coveralls, Alaska's most common winter outer garment, which hung on a peg protruding from the log wall. Heat waves like tiny translucent serpents wriggled in the air from the surface of the black iron woodstove in the corner. From within the dull, black metallic box crackled and popped the arrhythmic music of old-fashioned warmth. In a fairly new leather recliner, the only sign of modern comfort in the cabin, a man slowly awakened from a heavy slumber. The muscles in his bare arms rippled beneath a sheath of brown skin as he brought the chair to an upright position and stretched like a lion rising from the shade to hunt.
Marcus Johnson was but one member of a small community of rural Alaskans who lived partway between the old-fashioned frontier lifestyle and the 21st century.
Half the residents of Salt Jacket existed without at least one of the major modern conveniences of power, plumbing, or telephone. A good number of those folks were missing all three. Marcus was in the latter group.
For most, it was the lifestyle they preferred. They commuted to their jobs at Eielson Air Force Base twenty miles to the west, or all the way down to Fairbanks, thirty miles past that. After spending the day in high tech offices or running noisy construction equipment, they unwound on the drive home, where they would enter the world of silence. It was a world unknown to urbanites in the lower forty-eight.
Few city people have any idea just how quiet the world can be off the grid. More accurately, what they do not understand is how noisy their urban surroundings are. In the quiet of the small cabins and houses of this deeply forested paradise, there is no hum of electricity, no buzz of fluorescent lights, no whir of computer terminals. No television noise or constant droning of traffic. No human chatter or incessant scraping of people walking the streets all hours of the day and night.
The only sounds are the natural sounds of life, of the living world. When a person relaxes enough, the wilderness comes alive with the light tick of a bird's bony toes as it walks on a fence, or the muffled snort of a moose snuffling at a willow branch fifty feet away. At times, one can hear the crackling of a leaf falling off a branch and drifting to the ground.
That's why most of the residents of the forest stayed here. That's why Marcus came back to his hometown after twenty years of service in the military. He returned to a town and lifestyle where he could actually live reasonably well on the modest pension of a Marine Corps Master Sergeant.
No more noise. No more crowds. No more looking over his shoulder. No more war. He was glad to be home.
Marcus rose from the comfortably thick Lazy-Boy recliner next to the woodstove and again stretched his aching muscles. He had been chopping firewood all afternoon, until it got too dark to continue. Although Marcus had only been out of the Corps, and daily physical fitness training, about six months, he found the work of splitting wood to be exhausting. Maybe his friend Linus was right-military life had made him soft, at least as far as the Alaska bush was concerned.
He crossed the main room of the small cabin and looked in the mirror that hung on the wall above an old-fashioned washbasin. After twenty years of hard living his medium brown skin was still smooth and wrinkle-free. Few people properly guessed his real age of thirty-seven. They usually dropped ten or more years and assumed him to be in his mid-twenties. Large, deep brown eyes with almond-shaped lids belied the genetics of his Athabaskan mother. Tight, black curls of closely cropped hair atop a high forehead matched those of his father. While his skin and hair were that of a black man, an angular jaw, pointed nose, and high forehead revealed his grandfather's quarter-Puerto Rican ancestry.
Marcus was born and raised in Salt Jacket. He had been gone with the Marines for nearly all of his adult life, serving in Force Recon for most of that time, the "Elite of the Elite". He would never have imagined being so tired after swinging an axe for a few hours. Not a person who was typically prone to perspiring, he was surprised by how much water there was in his clothes by the time he was done.
The two-hour nap by the woodstove had both revived him and dried him out. Upon waking, he had a taste for some hot coffee, soup, and a fresh sandwich down at the store. He put on some relatively clean jeans, a fresh undershirt, and a flannel shirt. He narrowed the vent and turned down the damper on the woodstove and then slid into his tan Carhartt insulated coveralls and jacket and drew a black knit cap over his head. In the center of the room, he rotated the knob on the Coleman white gas lamp suspended on a chain that hung from the log beam that supported the roof, where it lit the main area of the cabin. He picked up his black and silver snowmobile helmet and headed out the door of the small cabin on his fifty acres of paradise deep in the quiet Arctic forest.
He hopped on the snowmobile parked in front of his cabin and pulled on the helmet. It squeezed his head snugly. The padding was warm against his ears and cheeks from the heat it had absorbed in the cabin. He started the engine and headed for the snow-covered trail that ran parallel to and slightly below the road to make the ten-mile run to the store that sat alongside the Richardson Highway.
As he pulled out of his property, he noticed that the Hamilton's farm was dark. Usually the light on their porch lit up the end of their driveway. There were no lights on in the house, either.
Hmm. That's strange. Must be a power outage. Oh, well at least that's something I don't have to worry about. When you've got no power, power outages won't do you no harm.A quarter of a mile down the road, the lights of an oncoming vehicle reflected around the bend. The trail beside the road rose where it intersected with a farmer's driveway. As Marcus came up the incline and drew level with the road, he sensed something large and fast come up behind him. Surprised by the abrupt motion, he turned his head and saw a rapidly moving pickup truck bearing down on him. It moved entirely too fast for the icy conditions. The truck veered onto the shoulder and headed straight for Marcus. He gunned the snowmobile up and onto the driveway and yanked the handle bar to the right, then put distance between himself and the truck.
Marcus saw the driver of the truck suddenly look up from whatever had distracted him and lurch the steering wheel to the left and back onto the road. The driver over-corrected and crossed the centerline of Johnson Road as he headed into the bend. Fifty yards ahead, it nearly collided head-on with the truck coming from the other direction and again lurched to the right.
Marcus sat on the snowmobile in the farmer's driveway and shook his head as he saw, in the light of the headlamps, the Tanana Valley Electrical Cooperative emblem on the side of both trucks.
"Crazy,"he whispered to himself. "Someone's going to catch hell for that near miss."
The two trucks disappeared into the distance. Marcus continued until he came to the Richardson Highway and turned left on the trail that followed alongside it. A few minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of the Salt Jacket General Store. The lights were on in the building and at the gas pump. The outage had apparently been repaired in the time it took him get there.
Marcus stopped the snowmobile in front of the store and took off his helmet as he rose to enter. A few yards away sat the electric company truck that had almost hit Marcus and the other truck. He noted the number on the side-forty-eight. He would call TVEC and lodge a complaint. Folks from the city seemed to think they could drive like idiots in the country, with immunity. They acted like they didn't realize people actually lived out there. For all the driver of that truck knew, Marcus's snowmobile could just as easily have been a child riding to a friend's house. The other truck could have been a mom returning from hockey practice with a vanload of kids. He shook his head in disgust and mounted the wooden steps to the entrance.
A bell suspended on a flat metal spring jangled noisily as Marcus opened the door. Once inside, he was greeted by the luscious odors of rich beef stew and hot apple pie. The smiling face of Linus Balsen beamed at him from behind the cash register, where he sat on a tall, padded bar stool just inside the door. Marcus's tension eased at the sight. He and Linus had been very close friends throughout their lives, growing up together as playmates and continuing into adulthood as close as brothers.
Joseph Balsen, a locally famous scientist and inventor, had started the Salt Jacket General Store in a metal Quonset building in 1954. Originally called Swede's Café, it primarily served to finance his never-ending research into "Arctic Thermo-Engineering". Over the years, it grew in successive renovations from its original postage stamp of a building to over 6000 square feet of grocery, dry goods, and hardware. While his inventions never made him wealthy, the store did pretty well on its own. Linus was the third generation of his family to run it.
They still served homemade soup, sandwiches, and pies to local residents, road workers, airmen, soldiers, and tourists who often filled the long diner bar that stretched past the register counter. Six booths provided more seating in a small, square room at the back half of the original Quonset building. Black-and-white pictures of the community's past hung from the curved walls, evoking nostalgic memories of the region's history.
From the register, Linus could look down the length of the rest of store, over shoulder-height racks of canned goods, bread, cereal, and medicines, and the glass doors of freezer cabinets filled with TV dinner entrées and packages of meat. A collection of "Alaska Grown" brand T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts were displayed along with a small assortment of other clothing, mainly intended for tourists. In the far back corner were the restrooms and several shelves of dog-eared paperback books, the small town's de facto library.
"Hey! The Marines have landed," Linus called from across the counter. "You must have some kind of freaky control over nature, huh? The power has been out all day, and then a few minutes before you show up, it comes back on. So, how's it going for you out there in the woods, old man?"
"Oh, it's going," Marcus responded. "I've been cutting fire wood all day, and I must say, it kicked my buttocks."
Linus smiled. "Man, for an old warrior, you sure are a wuss!"
Marcus grinned back. "Yeah, well, that's Master Sergeant Wuss to you, storekeeper."
Linus snapped to attention and raised his right hand in a mock salute.
"Aye, aye, Top!"
Marcus chuckled. He glanced down the length of the room as he took a stool at the long diner bar. A man stood midway down the store, comparing the ingredients of two cans of energy drink. The scent of the food grew stronger where Marcus sat. His hunger increased exponentially as it floated from the opening to the kitchen and swirled around his head.
"All right," Marcus said, turning back to the counter, "where's that pretty wife of yours? I need a hot bowl of her famous stew and some strong coffee."
"I'm here, Marcus."
The slightly accented voice drifted from behind the swinging doors that led to the small kitchen. A somewhat plump, yet still shapely, blonde-haired woman with attractive blue eyes and a pleasant face stepped out through the door with a large bowl of stew. She put the steaming food down in front of Marcus, who leaned over it and inhaled deeply. Cara Balsen reached into the warmer under the counter and came up with a small loaf of soft, warm bread, which she put on a dish and placed next to his stew.
"Lucky for you, we cook with gas. Otherwise, there would be nothing hot for you," she said. She turned to the back counter, took out a tiny dish with a ball of butter, and placed that next to the bread. "Even though the power was out, the stew and the bread are both fresh."
Cara and Linus had been married almost eighteen years. They met at a party just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, while Linus was stationed in Germany in the Army. She was a college student from Norway who, for some reason Marcus never understood, was totally enamored with his friend. Even now, all these years into their marriage, she continued to gaze at her husband as if he was some kind of ancient Greek deity. Marcus had served as best man at their wedding in Norway, where he had been training with commando teams of the Norwegian Coastal Rangers.
To Marcus, Cara was like the little sister he had always wanted growing up. While he was serving in the Marines, she wrote to him regularly to keep him apprised of the news in Salt Jacket. Cara and Linus's two children-Connor, age twelve, and Tia, age eleven-referred to him as Uncle Marcus. They loved to spend time playing games with him whenever he came to visit.
In 1998, when Marcus went missing in action for six months, Cara took care of his mother, who had a stroke after being informed he was presumed dead. Tahana Johnson, a beautiful Athabaskan native woman who looked much younger than her fifty-two years, died in the hospital only three days before Marcus managed to get to safety at the US Embassy in Guinea.
Cara was also the first to tell him of his father's accidental death last winter, when he had been trampled by a startled moose as he came out of the hay barn early one morning. By the time Marcus came home to stay, the cost of repaying the medical bills for his mother's care had taken all but fifty acres of the three-hundred-acre homestead originally started by Marcus's grandfather in the 1940's.
The Johnson homestead was one of six original plots of free land granted by the US government in hopes of developing the area into a thriving agricultural center. Through the fifties and sixties, the Johnson homestead supplied good quantities of oats, barley, potatoes, cabbage, and beets that fed the city of Fairbanks, as well as the hay that fed the goats, horses, and cattle of the region. With the arrival of chain supermarkets in the eighties, the agricultural businesses quickly died out. Most of the remaining homesteads were now little more than self-sufficient estates.
Linus and Cara had done all they could to hold on to what land was left for their friend so he could come home to something. For this, Marcus was indebted to them both. They were the closest thing to family he had left in the world.
A young girl's voice called out from the living quarters in the back of the store.
"Mommy! Connor's messing with me while I'm trying to do my homework!"
"Am not!" A boy's voice shouted in response.
There was a loud thud, and Connor hollered in pain. "OW!"
"Well," Cara said, "looks like I have to go to my other job. Enjoy the stew."
She walked through a doorway marked "private" on the side of the kitchen. The men smiled as they heard her start to discipline the children. Whenever she got upset, Cara's accent always got stronger. The door to the house slammed shut, and the voices of the arguing children and their Norwegian mother became muffled through the walls.
Marcus turned back to his dinner. As he enjoyed the first steaming-hot spoonful of the, rich, thick, brown stew, the man at the soda cooler approached the front counter.
The man was Caucasian, average height, about Marcus's age. He appeared physically fit, but as he drew near, Marcus noted that he walked with a limp. Black slacks, a white shirt, and a cheap black tie made him look like a Geek Squad computer technician. He glanced over at Marcus.
"How ya doing?" the man asked.
"Fine," Marcus replied.
"Former military?"
"You can tell?"
"Yeah, I would guess Marines by the way you carry yourself."
"Right again. Yourself?"
"I tried the Marines back in the eighties, but ended up with two broken ankles and a quick ticket home right out of boot camp."
"Ow." Marcus scrunched his face in sympathy. "That sucks."
"Yeah, well, fate, I guess." The man reached out his hand in greeting. "Name's Aaron Michaels."
Marcus responded with his own name.
Michaels continued, "When I'm not fixing computer networks, I also happen to be a Staff Sergeant in the Alaska State Defense Force. It's the state-run militia. If you're ever interested in getting back into some military activities, you should give us a call."
"Militia?" Marcus was wary. He recalled the trouble with private militias in the Midwest in the 90's.
"Well, sort of," Michaels replied. "We're actually a state-run agency under the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, so we're not a Timothy McVeigh kind of group. We're always on the lookout for men just out of the military to help fill our ranks."
Linus joined the conversation. "You guys are the ones with ALASKA on your uniform pockets instead of US ARMY, right?"
"Yep, that's us," Michaels said. "I'm the NCO in charge of the 492nd Coastal Scouts. We work with the Coast Guard and the troopers doing terrorist interdiction patrols in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound."
"Terrorist interdiction, huh?" Marcus asked. 'Found any terrorists yet?"
Michaels grinned. "No, but if they do ever show up, there's a bunch of us old guys waiting to give them the what-for."
"Oh, yeah? And just what would you do if you found some?" Marcus said with a hint of sarcasm.
"Bad things," replied the militia sergeant in a melodramatic tone. "Actually, I hope they don't show up, but just in case, we're training for the worst. At least, as much training as I can get my guys to do without pay."
"You don't get paid?" Linus asked.
"Nope. Not unless we're activated by the governor."
"How often do you train?"
"One weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, just like the National Guard."
"Except no pay," Linus repeated.
"Yeah." Michaels smirked, then added in a mock-heroic tone, "Our pay is the satisfaction of a job well done."
"Sounds great," Marcus said sarcastically.
"Actually some of the units get called up by the state pretty regularly, and when they do, the money is very good."
Michaels finished paying for his energy drink and continued, "Well, I've got to be off. I'm heading home to Anchorage to take some of my guys into the mountains near Healy for some of that free training. Here's my card. Call me sometime if you're interested in joining us. Like I said, we always need someone with experience, especially if you can teach."
Marcus reached out and accepted the card. "Thanks, I'll think about it."
"That's all I ask." Michaels smiled and walked out.
As the door closed behind Michaels, Marcus noticed motion at the rear of the store. Two men came out of the restroom. Their heads moved above the shoulder-height racks that held various grocery items and merchandise. Something about them seemed foreign.
They picked up a couple of bags of chips from the metal wire racks, then stopped at the refrigerated cabinet and pulled out large cans of Rock Star energy drink from behind the glass door. The rubber soles of their new-looking Sorel mukluk boots squeaked on the linoleum tiles with each step.
The two strangers saw Marcus looking at them. He nodded and smiled in a friendly greeting when they made eye contact, then he turned back to his dinner.
Marcus felt uneasy. He didn't know what it was, but his internal antennae sounded an alarm. His senses leaped to a heightened state of alert like a Doberman Pinscher awakened by a noise in the night. After twenty years' hunting bad guys in some of the worst places in the world, he knew to listen to these internal signals. His body tensed with a fight-or-flight level of energy that pulsed electrically through his nerves.
Linus noticed the mood change come over his friend. He looked up to take notice of the two men making their way toward the front of the store. As they approached, their words become audible.
Marcus's tension increased tenfold. During his career in the Marine Corps, he had served as a specialist in anti-terrorist operations. He had discovered at an early age that he had a talent for learning languages. Albanian, specifically the dialect of northern Albania and the southern parts of the former Yugoslavia, was the main language the Marine Corps decided he should study at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, early in his career. According to the military, he was natively fluent. Despite the fact that there were very few brown skinned in that part of the world, the military decision-makers believed he could be used in a variety of roles throughout the region. During the Yugoslav civil war and the later Kosovo war, Marcus's skills were employed extensively.
One of the men, who stood about six feet tall with a thick black mustache and closely cut hair, spoke with a distinctive Gheg accent from northern Albania. The other was shorter, blond and blue-eyed. He was clean-shaven and carried himself on an athletic frame. His chiseled facial features made him look like he came from a long line of Nazi poster boys. His accent was Kosovar.
The pair spoke openly in Albanian as they approached the counter. They obviously assumed that neither of the others understood them.
"Look, Nikola, they even have mud people here in this frozen wasteland. He must be the descendant of slaves," said the blond-haired Kosovar as Marcus smiled at them.
"He looks strong," replied the tall one. "Stupid, but strong. I bet he would sell for a good bit on the markets of Yemen. He would make a good household eunuch for some Arab Sheik."
The pair let out a chuckle.
"When we complete the job, that is what we should do," said the Kosovar, "Get into the slave business and put all the American blacks back on the Arab slave market. We will be rich!"
The tall Albanian looked at Marcus, smiled widely, and said in nasal Gheg, "You are a big, stupid black oaf, and I will enjoy cutting your balls off someday."
The two grinned with mock friendliness and put their items down on the counter.
"Howdy," Marcus said in English. "You guys must work for the power company, right?"
"Yes," replied the blond. "We were just out here working on the outage."
He spoke very good English with only the slightest hint of an accent.
"Boy, that outage was something, wasn't it?" Linus asked. "All day long, and then poof! It comes back on."
Nikola responded in strongly accented English, "It is working now, just a simple case of a burned-out transformer on that main link. Allah willing, it won't happen again."
Linus raised his eyebrows at Nikola's statement and said, "Yeah, God willing." He finished scanning their snacks with the infrared barcode reader attached to the cash register and added, "That'll be thirteen dollars and seventy-two cents."
The Kosovar opened his wallet and handed Linus a hundred-dollar bill. As he did so, Marcus glanced down briefly and noticed the man had a thick stack of cash in his wallet-what appeared to be thousands of dollars.
The Kosovar took his change and goods, and then turned to the door, Nikola close behind. When he pulled the door open, a thick, rolling mist churned in as the frozen outside air met the warm interior atmosphere.
The Albanian turned back toward them. "Have a good night, gentlemen. Insha'Allah."
"Yeah," Marcus replied. "Stay warm out there."
The bell above the door jangled loudly as it closed behind the two. Marcus and Linus heard the Tanana Valley truck start up. A moment later, the Albanian electricians sped off into the night on the highway, heading back toward Fairbanks. Marcus and Linus sat in silence as the sound of the truck faded.
"So, Marcus," Linus asked, "Did you get what they said? I only remember bits and pieces of those European languages, but that sounded like Yugoslavian or something. Am I close?"
"Albanian," replied the retired Marine.
"Albanian? Isn't that your main military language?"
"Yeah."
"So, what did they say?"
"They're going to cut your balls off and sell you as a eunuch to an Arab sheik."
"Excuse me?" Linus's eyes widened. "I think Cara would have something to say about that."
"Actually, they were talking about me." Marcus took a mouthful of his stew. "They're up to something. They talked about finishing a job."
Linus crossed his arms over his chest. "Think we should call the cops?"
"Yep."
Linus reached for the phone and added, "In my humble opinion, it sounds like they're a couple of Tangos."
"Well, the problem would be getting cops to believe a report about terrorists in Salt Jacket." Marcus set down his spoon. "Give me your phone, though. They nearly ran me over on Johnson Road. I got the number from the side of the truck. I'll call the cops and report them for reckless driving. We can see what turns up."
Linus handed the wireless phone and reached across to hand it to Marcus. He froze when the sound of truck tires crunched on the gravel-strewn snow of the parking lot. Bright beams of light shot through the window next to the cash register as a large pickup truck pulled in to the first parking space near the door.
The engine idled with a deep rumble for several seconds, then went quiet. A moment later, the lights turned off, then a door slammed shut. Boots crunched on the snow and advanced onto the wooden step of the entry landing.
Marcus tensed his body. He gripped the small bread knife in his right hand so that the blade was flush against his forearm. Linus reached under the register and put his hand on the custom Pachmyr grip of the .357 magnum pistol stored on a shelf immediately under the cash drawer.
A single, unidentifiable shadow of a man appeared briefly in the glass of the window set in the top half of the door. The door swung open loudly, jangling the bell that hung just above the top of the jamb.
The man looked up. "Good even..."
A startled look spread on his face when he saw Marcus. It was quickly replaced with a broad smile.
"Well, I'll be. Marcus Johnson. What in the world are you doing back home?"
Marcus and Linus instantly relaxed.
"Evening, sir," Marcus said, putting the knife back down beside his bowl of stew. "I'm here to stay now, retired."
Linus released the pistol.
"That's good, real good." Eugene reached out and shook Marcus's hand in his. "Linus, whatever Marcus is eating there, put it on my bill." He looked at Marcus with an expression of proud satisfaction, as if the younger man were his own son.
"I can't let you do that!" Marcus objected. Eugene held up a hand to silence the protest. "Don't try to be all polite and crap, young man. You may be a retired Marine superhero and whatnot, but I'll still kick your butt if you refuse. Your dad was my best friend; I'm doing it in his honor."
Marcus could not argue with that. "Thanks."
The older man sat on a stool next to Marcus. "So, you are retired, huh? Must be nice at such a young age."
Marcus swallowed a spoonful of the still-steaming stew, then answered, "Yes, sir. I'm retired from the Corps, and here to stay. No more war for me. Linus and Cara managed to save fifty acres of our land from the creditors after Dad died. I set up in Grandpa Johnson's old cabin at six mile last summer."
"You've been here since summer and didn't come to call?" Eugene scolded.
Linus set a cup of coffee in front of Eugene. The older man nodded his thanks and lifted the white porcelain cup to his lips to take a sip as Marcus replied, "Sorry I didn't contact you. I've just been so busy making the old place livable, and, to be honest, I had a lot to sort out and really didn't want to see anybody."
"I understand, son. Well, at any rate, it's good to have you back, and all in one piece."
Eugene took another sip of the strong black coffee. He turned and spoke in a nearly whispered voice. "Does Lonnie know you're back?"
"I don't think so. I didn't get in touch with her, that is. I don't think it would be a good idea to interfere."
"Interfere?" Eugene asked, screwing up his eyes in confusion. "With what?"
"She's a married woman," Marcus replied. "I don't want to be the one to cause any problems in a happily married couple's life."
Eugene sat up straight with an incredulous look on his face. "You didn't know?"
"Know what?"
"That idiot left her two years ago. He took off with some young Air Force tramp about half his age." Eugene was clearly still angry regarding his former son-in-law. His tone of voice practically eviscerated the man in effigy. "I never did like that boy. He was a walking example of head-stuck-in-rectum syndrome."
"I didn't know," Marcus said. He turned a sharp gaze on Linus.
"Hey, bro, I was going to tell you, but," the shopkeeper stammered, "it just wasn't the right time."
Marcus turned back to his stew. He spooned up a large piece of yellow potato that floated on the surface and held it in front of his mouth, unsure of whether to eat it. His appetite suddenly fluctuating as memories of his love for Lonnie and the bloodbath of Sierra Leone flooded his consciousness. "Well, if she still wanted me, she would have called me. She had my number at Pendleton."
"She was embarrassed, Marcus," Eugene said. "I know my daughter. She was torn up about not having accepted your proposal before she met him. When she found out you were still alive, she almost went nuts. But she held on. I think it was because she hoped you might still come back someday."
"Well, we'll see, sir." Marcus said, his voice low and pensive.
Linus spoke up from the other side of the counter. "Eugene, give her the store number. She can call here and leave a message if she likes. I'll make sure Marcus gets it."
"You got it, Linus." Eugene turned back to the handsome, brown-skinned man seated next to him. "Marcus, you've always been like a son to me. Even if things don't work out with you and Lonnie, that won't change. If you ever need anything, and I mean anything, let me know."
"Aye, aye, sir," he replied.
"All right," Eugene said, taking out his wallet as he walked toward the register to pay the bill. "It's time for me to go. I've gotta track down a couple of yahoos that nearly ran me off the road on the way to the substation."
Marcus straightened. "That was you?"
"You saw it?"
"Yeah, I was on my snowmobile on the side of the road. I barely got out of their way myself. The guys who drove that truck left here just a few minutes before you came in. I was about to call the cops and report them for reckless driving."
Eugene turned and sat back down, one foot on the floor and the other on the metal rail that ran around the seat post.
"Their names were Adem and Nikola, according to Officer Bannock at the pump station. But I'll be damned if I know of any guys by those names at TVEC, or with any of our contractors."
"Did Bannock say anything else about them?" Marcus asked.
"He said he had an uneasy feeling about the way they acted when he approached them. Why do you ask?"
"I did two tours in the 'Stan with Bannock, one during the Soviet Occupation, when we weren't supposed to be there, and one in '04 just before he messed up his knee. He's got an amazing danger antenna. If Charlie Bannock was suspicious, you had better get it checked out. I got the impression they don't work for TVEC at all."
"What do you think they're up to, then?" Eugene asked. "Bannock thought they were speaking Albanian. We aren't at war with that country, are we?"
"No, but Albania is the only European country that's an Islamic Republic. Al Qaeda does a lot of recruiting there," Marcus replied.
"Well, don't that just take it all?" Eugene muttered. "What in the world would terrorists want all the way up here, messing with our electrical grid? I mean, this is the edge of the civilized world, not exactly a juicy target for Al Qaeda."
"Whatever their purpose for being here, they are here," Marcus said. "And if those two aren't Tangos, then my twenty years in the Corps was a waste."
"Dadgummit!" blurted the older man. "I'd better get in touch with Bob Stark down at Alaska Homeland Security. This day is going from bad to worse. "Well, you boys have a good rest of the night."
Eugene pulled his cell phone out of a coat pocket and glanced at the screen to see if he had reception. Three of the four bars flashed above the icon of an antenna in the corner of the small LCD. He continued to speak to Marcus and Linus as he thumbed through the contacts list on the phone.
"Give me a ring if you see those two come by here again, or anyone else suspicious, for that matter. Here are my private office and cell phone numbers, and e-mail." He handed each of them a couple of business cards. "I'm taking it to the troopers right away. Don't hesitate to call at any time with anything you may find out."
Eugene pushed the dial button and put the phone to his ear as he turned toward the door.
"Marcus," he called back, "I'm gonna tell Lonnie that you're back and give her Linus's number. That'll put it in her court. I ask you, give her a chance. A lot has changed in the past couple years."
"Thanks, Mr. Wyatt."
Marcus turned back to his soup as his father's best friend walked out the door, got into his truck, and drove out of the parking lot. Eugene turned the big tan F250 west on the Richardson Highway and headed through the darkness back to Fairbanks.
- Chapter 4
Training Zone Bravo
Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska
December 17th
18:00 Hours
Sergeant Choi Ho Kil looked at the small digital display in his gloved hand. He studied the numbers that glowed softly on the screen and did some quick calculations in his head. Choi's excitement grew as he realized the detector worked just the way he had designed it.
"Captain Park!" he whispered hoarsely into the microphone that hung on the front of his white balaclava. "I think we have found it, sir."
Captain Park came out of the shadows toward the sergeant. The bulk of his hooded white parka made the captain look like a polar bear cub running on its hind legs. Park took several bounding steps across the four-foot-deep blanket of snow that covered the landscape, white nylon-covered snowshoes keeping him on the surface of the powder.
"What do you see, Sergeant?" asked the captain as he flipped up the eyepieces of his night vision goggles and looked at the small electronic device in Choi's hand.
"The scanner is picking up the chemical signature very heavily around here, sir. It can only be the real thing. Look at the line here, sir. It indicates the fissure is right in front of us."
"Excellent!" declared the captain, satisfaction evident in his voice. Sergeant Choi had found the location surprisingly fast. The information given by their field operative was extremely accurate. This boded well for the mission's success.
"The general will be very pleased," he said, clapping a hand on the sergeant's shoulder. "But you, Ho, you will be the most rewarded. Your diligence and clear thinking made it all possible. I am going to recommend you for promotion to officer."
"Thank you, Captain," Choi replied, barely able to conceal his pride. An officer, he thought. Joining Z Detachment was the best thing I have done. I can finally live with some measure of comfort. Maybe I can even have private quarters in the barracks. This assignment has truly been worthwhile.
Captain Park spoke swiftly into his radio. A dozen other white-draped forms made their way forward and knelt in the snow before their commander.
"Team one, set up security here. Team two and three, we will begin excavation immediately."
The four-man groups split up and began their respective tasks. The members of team one spread out into the surrounding foliage of willow, alder, and white paper birch. They formed a security perimeter about thirty meters in diameter. White-clad soldiers armed with sniper rifles concealed themselves among the trees, facing the points of the compass. All approaches to the site were under observation. They checked fields of fire and settled into the cold snow for their shift while the other two teams set to work clearing the snow from the area Sergeant Choi pointed out.
"Work quickly, men. We must get down to the surface fast and find out if we can get in."
Chapter 4
Emergency Operations Center
Fairbanks North Star Borough Public Safety Building
December 17th
19:50 Hours
The phone on the desk of Trooper Commander Robert Stark rang only once and his hand was on the receiver, snatching it up to his ear. Silvery hair, shorn in a flat-top cut that left only a quarter of an inch on top of his scalp, sparkled reflectively in the fluorescent lights of his office on the third floor of the Fairbanks North Star BoroughPublic Safety Building.
"EOC, Commander Stark," he said in a blunt, authoritative voice. The muscles in his square jaw rippled as he spoke. His cold, gray eyes peered at the digital display on the phone as he read the number on the Caller ID.
"Bob, this is Eugene Wyatt. I figured you'd still be there."
"Of course I'd still be here. Once the Emergency Operations Center is activated, I can't leave until the whole thing is closed up and everyone's out. Do we have the all-clear now that the lights are back on?"
"That's what I'm calling about, Bob. Are you going to be at your office for a while?" Eugene sounded troubled.
"I'll wait for you if that's what you need."
"Yeah, can't talk on this line right now. I'll be there in about twenty minutes."
"No problem. I'll keep the coffee hot for you."
"We may need something stronger than that, buddy. I'll see you in a few."
The line clicked and went dead. Bob Stark pressed the button to reset the line. He rang his wife, Caroline, to say he would be a little later than he had originally told her. She did not need to wait up.
Caroline Stark was used to this. After thirty-one years of being married to an Alaska State Trooper, the middle-aged mother of three grown children, whom she had practically raised alone, had at times thought she wouldn't know what to do if he actually came home at a regular time more than once or twice a month. As often as he was gone, Commander Bob Stark was lucky she had been a faithful wife through the years.
Two months past her fiftieth birthday, she was still fit and quite attractive. She did not look at all like a grandmother of five. Her well cared-for skin and voluptuous figure, large breasts, a narrow waist, and modestly round hips still turned heads when she went out. With a little dye in her salt-and-pepper hair and skillful application of makeup, Caroline Stark could easily erase twenty years from her appearance. She'd be a real hit in the bar scene.
Lord knows the chances for infidelity rose more often than he wanted to think about, especially since their last child had finished college and left home the previous year. But he knew she loved him, and he loved her. Retirement to a very lucrative pension and savings was within sight. He had promised her that once retired he would take her on a long around-the-world tour, just the two of them. Two more years-then he would be all hers.
It was eight-thirty before Eugene Wyatt stepped into the open door of Commander Stark's spacious corner office. To the left against the wall stood several floor-to-ceiling dark wooden bookcases full of volumes of case law, state regulations, and emergency services training manuals. A large conference table, surrounded by twelve comfortable leather office chairs, stretched most of the length of the room near the shelves.
Directly in front of the door was the large, very expensive-looking mahogany desk at which Commander Stark sat authoritatively. Behind him was a matching credenza. When the building first opened four months earlier, several reporters gawked at the pricey office furniture. They tried to accuse the commander of misuse of government funds for having purchased such lavish personal equipment. Their accusations were suppressed when he produced a receipt showing he had paid for it himself with proceeds from the sale of a house.
Oblivious to the surroundings, Eugene strode in at a quick pace and closed the door. His face was grave. The look immediately raised Stark's level of concern.
"Eugene," said the trooper, "what's got you so bothered? You look like someone just stole your Christmas presents."
"Yeah, bothered is a good way to put it," Eugene replied. "Have you still got that bottle of Drambuie in your desk?"
Stark hesitated. "Yeah, I do."
"I think tonight warrants cracking it open."
Bob pulled a bottle of the famous Scotch liqueur from the bottom drawer of his desk, then turned in his chair and grabbed a couple of white ceramic coffee cups that were sitting upside down on a black lacquered tray on the credenza behind him. As he poured, Eugene explained what he had found at the substation, the information from Officer Bannock, then finally Marcus and Linus's encounter with the two suspicious men.
"And here's the clincher; the two men described by Marcus and the others definitely do not work for us, or for any of our contractors. Just after I hung up with you, Franklin back at TVEC called me to verify that truck forty-eight had been at Magnuson's Body & Engine shop last night. When they saw that the power wasn't coming back on for a while, the manager told the employees to stay home. One of them went over to check for us, and found that our truck was missing. He already put a call in to the Fairbanks Police Department to report it. Their security cameras weren't working, with the power out."
Commander Stark leaned back in his chair, feet up on the edge of his desk as he listened. He took a short sip of the smooth, honey-sweetened whiskey and gently swished it around in his mouth as he stared up at the ceiling in thought for a moment before swallowing. He let out a breath, savoring the sweet scent of the liqueur as he exhaled.
"Damn," he muttered. He put his feet down, sat up in the soft leather office chair, and leaned toward Eugene, placing his elbows on the desk. "So Johnson and Bannock both thought these guys seemed like terrorists?"
"That's what they said, Bob. And both of them just spent the past couple decades hunting down bad guys like that, so I'd value their opinions."
"Yeah, well. Sadly, police work isn't as cut-and-dried as military work. We can't do much on suspicion without getting ourselves in a hell of a lot of hot water. We need hard evidence, not opinions. I'll tell my men to keep an eye out for those two you described, and we'll find out what happened to your truck. I'll also send a patrol car out to the Salt Jacket substation to have someone take a look around and interview that Doyon security officer. In the meantime, keep it quiet as much as possible. If there is something going on, we don't want to spook the bad guys before we can get enough information to bring them in."
Eugene nodded and asked, "Do you think we should call the FBI?"
"Not yet," Bob said. "You know how the Feds operate. Those agents are so backlogged that they don't act on anything until there's a mountain of evidence glaring in their faces. And by that time, bodies could be starting to pile up. And, if we turn it over to them, that takes it out of our jurisdiction and we can't touch it without their say-so. I'd really rather not have this end up sitting in a stack of cold case files that never get looked at until something terrible happens."
"I see," Eugene said. "Well, I've told Marcus and the other two to keep in touch if they see anything else unusual. The Doyon fella said he'd set up video surveillance and patrol our station for a while on their rounds, since any criminal activity at our place may directly affect their pipeline as well."
"Go home and get some sleep, Eugene," Bob said. "I'll get my officers working on it right away. Your favorite trooper is on tonight and patrolling the stretch to Salt Jacket, so we'll get this thing rolling within the hour."
"Excellent."
"Yeah. By the way, she's on her headingto some serious recognition. The governor called me today to say she personally wants to present your daughter a commendation for the way she handled the Radcliffe case. Her investigative work busted that drug ring wide open, with enough good evidence to put half a dozen of those bozos away for life. The way she's going, one of these days she's gonna be sitting at this desk. Or maybe even in the commandant's chair in Juneau."
Eugene smiled proudly as he rose from the chair. "Yep...that's my girl. What else would you expect? Anyway, you've got my cell phone number. Call me as soon as you find anything."
"Will do," said Commander Stark. He stood from behind his desk and reached out to shake Eugene's hand.
After Eugene left Stark picked up the handset of his phone and dialed the dispatcher's office on the ground floor of the Public Safety Building.
Glenda Miller answered the in-house phone. "Dispatch, this is Glenda," she said with a pleasant voice.
Her tone was at once both direct and calming, almost pastoral. Glenda, a heavy-set woman in her late forties, had been on the job for nearly twenty years. Her workspace was full of pictures of her grandchildren, two cute little toddlers. From the small console, she fielded calls from people in utter panic as their world disintegrated in front of their eyes, shattered by events that all too often ended tragically. Her ability to calm people in the most dire of situations had saved many lives and long ago had earned her the position of lead dispatcher.
"Glenda, this is Commander Stark."
"Yes, sir. How may I help you?"
"Radio out and have Trooper Wyatt call me on her cell phone ASAP."
"Yes, sir," came the response. "You're in your office?"
"Yes. Have her call me direct."
"Will do, Commander."
Commander Stark hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. The springs under the seat creaked as they compressed, and he set his feet back on the surface of the desk. He replayed in his thoughts the things Eugene had told him. He mulled over the pieces of information, trying to acquire a picture in his mind of several different possibilities. Fifteen minutes later, the phone on his desk rang with the peculiar tone that indicated the call was coming from a secure cell phone carried by one of his troopers.
He picked it up and said, "Stark here."
"Sir, this is Trooper Wyatt. You asked me to call," a firm and confident female voice responded.
He explained to her what Eugene had told him, including incident specifics, the name of the Doyon security guard, and descriptions of the two men and their vehicle. Once done, he said, "You will also need to interview the two men at the Salt Jacket General Store. The owner, Linus Balsen, and a customer who spoke briefly with the suspects, Marcus Johnson."
Without hesitation, she said, "Yes, sir. I'm about five miles from Johnson Road now, so I should be there in a few minutes."
"Report directly to me on what you find. I'm heading home in a few minutes, so call my cell phone. I also want your written report to come directly to my desk. I'll be handling this case myself."
"Yes, sir."
"By the way," he added before hanging up, "we need to keep this under wraps, even from the rest of the command, until we get an idea of just what is going on. Understand?"
"Yes, sir. I won't tell anyone else without an order from you."
"Good. I'll be waiting for your call."
Stark hung up the phone and closed his office for the night.
"Caroline is going to be worried sick," he said as he headed out the door. It was nearly ten o'clock.
Chapter 5
Richardson Highway
Salt Jacket Alaska
17 December
21:44 Hours
Trooper Lonnie Wyatt pressed the disconnect button on her secure cell phone and snapped it back into the cradle on the dash-board of the white turbo-charged Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser as she drove down the Richardson Highway toward Johnson Road.
Her mind reverberated with the name Commander Stark had mentioned: Marcus Johnson. The name of the man she had been in love with since high school, the man who had proposed to her. The man she rejected because he wouldn't leave the Marines for her.
"I'll kill Dad for not telling me he was in town," she said out loud. She found herself shocked by the sound of Marcus's name on her own lips. "Come on, girl. You're an Alaska State Trooper. Keep it professional and get the investigation over with."
Born Sukmi Kim, Lonnie was the adopted daughter of Eugene and Leslie Wyatt. The couple had taken her into their family while stationed with the US Army in South Korea in 1975. She was six years old when she had been orphaned after a relatively peaceful demonstration for student's rights escalated into a nightmare as North Korean Communist infiltrators shot it out with South Korean soldiers and police. Her parents, graduate students at Yonseh University, had been on their way to pick Sukmi up from her grandmother's house. They got caught in the crossfire and died huddled in each other's arms.
Sukmi's grandmother's health declined rapidly after the loss of her only son. She had a stroke two weeks later and Sukmi found herself left to a neighbor. When it became clear that her grandmother's condition would not improve, the neighbor took Sukmi to live in an orphanage. Because of her age-most people adopted babies-the little girl stayed there for nearly a year.
Then along came Eugene Wyatt, a twenty-two-year-old sergeant in the Communications Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, at Camp Casey. The Army base was located in the small city of Dongduchon, nestled in the mountains just north of Seoul. It was only thirty miles south of the demilitarized zone where North Korean soldiers faced off daily with their South Korean and American counterparts across a tense, three-hundred-yard-wide, land-mine-studded border manned by heavily armed soldiers from both sides.
Eugene had always wanted a family. He and his wife, Leslie, found that they could not have a child of their own. The couple decided that adoption was their best choice, and South Korea at the time was practically overflowing with children waiting for homes.
They drove forty miles to the city of Seoul and found the Blessed Angels Catholic Orphanage in the midst of the bustling metropolis along the banks of the Han River. When the Wyatts entered the courtyard, the children all stopped what they were doing and stared at the white-skinned, round-eyed Migook who walked past them. Looks of hope sparked on some of their faces, while others seemed to know that once again, they would be passed up. They turned away and sullenly continued their games. Eugene and Leslie had initially, like most couples, wanted a baby.
Six-year-old Sukmi sat alone on the concrete steps that led to the massive, dark wooden front door of the stone-and-timber-frame three-story building. The little girl had a single, thickly woven braid of long, black hair hanging down to the middle of her back. She looked up at the kind faces of the man and woman who approached. Her eyes were filled with the pain of a life broken, of hope nearly crushed. As they approached, Sukmi's pleading gaze captivated both Eugene and Leslie as if her fragile soul cried out from within the tiny body, begging to be redeemed from the misery her life had become.
Eugene was immediately overwhelmed with compassion for the pretty little girl. Inside the building, he asked the nun who spoke with them about the girl on the steps. Once they heard her story, he and Leslie agreed that if she was willing to come with them, they wanted to give her a new home. The girl was brought in to meet them, and although they were not able to communicate with more than hand gestures and Eugene's minimal, broken Korean, hope again sparked in her eyes as Sukmi realized that this Migook couple really seemed to care, that they truly wanted to rescue her.
Over the course of a month, the paperwork was done, the fees paid and cute little Sukmi officially became their daughter. Six months later, the Army moved them to Fort Wainright in Fairbanks, Alaska. The American name "Lonnie" was chosen because it was easy to spell and say in both English and Korean. Sukmi thought it was pretty. She told her new parents that the name "sounded like flowers and sunshine" to her.
The Wyatts liked Fairbanks, a small city of about thirty thousand at the time. Eugene and his wife were originally from Oklahoma. However, when they got out of the Army, the couple decided to stay where they were. He got a job as a lineman with Tanana Valley Electrical Cooperative. They settled into a new home in the Graehl neighborhood on the east side of Fairbanks.
Lonnie's childhood in Alaska was peaceful and comfortable. Her parents had decided that she should not lose the knowledge of her Korean heritage, so they joined a small Korean Presbyterian church located near their home and made sure she was tutored in her native language and culture. By the time she was an adult, she had retained natively fluent Korean and unaccented English and moved easily both in Korean and American social circles.
She met Marcus during a cross-country track meet at Lathrop High School in 1984. Lonnie was a contender for the All Alaska title in the girls' 5K event. Marcus was the current state champion in the boys' 10K. He had clean, golden-brown skin topped by a thick layer of wavy black hair closely cropped on the sides and combed back over his head. His features, a gentle mixture of black and Athabaskan native, gave him an appearance that was at once strong and tender. Throughout the race that first day, she could not take her eyes off him. He noticed her constant glances and reciprocated in like manner.
They dated all through the rest of high school until he joined the Marines after graduation in 1986. While in college at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she majored in mathematics, Lonnie waited for him to finish his six-year commitment and come home. She envisioned them getting married and settling down to a normal Alaskan life of enjoying the great outdoors, having children, and taking an occasional trip to some remote tropical island in mid-winter.
Marcus constantly wrote romantic letters and postcards to her from wherever he was stationed. He often penned beautiful poems for her. Those were her favorite part of his writings. He had the ability to explain his thoughts in ways more real than she understood her own feelings. Every time he wrote to her, she felt as if she was looking into his soul. She wished she had the same ability. Her strength lay not in poetry, though, but in the analytical thinking of math and hard sciences.
Several times, Marcus sent her money to fly down to see him wherever he was stationed, and once even brought her to Europe, to take part in Linus and Cara's wedding in Norway. It was there that he asked her to marry him. Lonnie had thought about it during the previous years. She knew that eventually he would ask. She had worked over her response many times. Her answer came with a stipulation. It sounded logical to her. His love for her would be proven by his willingness to submit to this one simple request.
Lonnie knew Marcus would be a good husband, but the idea of sharing him with a job that constantly called him to distant places and faraway lands did not fit her vision of a happy couple. That their marriage could suddenly end with a chaplain knocking on the door to inform the young wife of the sad news of her husband's heroic death was more than she thought she could handle. If he would leave the Marines, she would accept. From the moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them.
He told her he understood, but hoped she would change her mind. He could not leave the Corps. It had become his identity. He was a "poster Marine," the model of a compassionate warrior recruiters used to draw new men into their brotherhood. Lonnie continued to write to him and he wrote back. As time went on, the romantic allusions in his letters gradually disappeared.
Lonnie graduated from UAF and became a math teacher at the school where she and Marcus had met. As she taught, she became increasingly distressed by the problem of drugs and crime that was growing among the teenagers of the region. When a tragic accident involving drugs took the life of one of her favorite students, Lonnie's heart prompted her to become more pro-active in stemming the tide of moral decline she observed. She joined the State Troopers in 1996. In her new job, Lonnie discovered what it was that Marcus saw in the Marines, a life not unlike that of a trooper.
While Marcus was in England on a tour with the Royal Marines, she wrote and explained her new understanding. Her heart leaped with joy when she received his response that let her know he still loved her and looked forward to seeing her again. Marcus told her he was leaving on a peacekeeping mission to Africa. They would talk about it when he got back.
Marcus disappeared in Sierra Leone. He was reported as missing and presumed killed in action. The story was in all the papers. Local hero gives his life defending an orphanage ravaged by guerillas.While his hometown mourned the loss of Marcus Johnson, Lonnie Wyatt mourned the loss of her soul.
Jerry entered her life a month after she heard of Marcus's death. They met in a bar and fell into a fast-moving relationship as she tried to escape the gnawing pain of her loss. Lonnie got pregnant, and a short time later, they were married with little ceremony by a justice of the peace. Jerry was no Marcus, but he was moderately handsome and was willing to take responsibility for their child.
Four months later, Lonnie learned that Marcus had escaped, and was alive. When he wrote the promised letter full of hope and vowing to keep himself for her alone, she was devastated. Lonnie wept for days. She did not tell Jerry why. He assumed it was a hormonal thing with the pregnancy.
The baby miscarried the week after receiving the letter. In time, so did the marriage. Trooper work was too demanding. Especially when the wife is the trooper and the husband works a nine-to-five cubicle job on the military base, surrounded by pretty young women feeling their first years of freedom from their parents.
Lonnie discovered that Jerry had been having an affair with a nineteen-year-old Air Force office clerk named Tonya for more than a year. The girl had been fresh at the base and only two months past her eighteenth birthday when they met. By the time they ran away together, he was thirty-five and she was still not legally allowed to drink alcohol. Jerry didn't even bother to leave a note. Instead, Tonya text-messaged Lonnie after they had crossed the border into Canada to say that she could keep all of her soon-to-be ex-husband's stuff.
Lonnie was glad to see him go. Jerry, as the years revealed, was a conceited, self-absorbed whiner. He was exactly nothing like Marcus, who still appeared in her dreams and walked into her thoughts at random. She was still in love with her Marine.
The sound of the frozen pavement rumbled under the tires of her cruiser as she drove down the highway toward Salt Jacket and the dreaded reunion.
"How am I going to talk to him?" she muttered to herself.
She would first check out the witnesses at the pump station on Johnson Road. The glow of the pipeline's security lights shimmered in the distance through the tops of the spruce trees that hid the pump station buildings from view. Three massive five-ton concrete barriers were placed in a pattern twenty yards in front of the gate. Drivers were forced to zigzag through the obstacles in order to reach the gate. Moving through the barriers, she lowered the window of her cruiser. A uniformed security officer stepped from the guardhouse, an MP5 submachine gun slung around his shoulder. One hand rested on the pistol grip of the weapon as he held the other out, signaling her to stop.
"Good evening, ma'am. How can I help you?"
The guard spoke with a hint of caution in his voice as he eyed her over, peering into the cruiser as if to verify it was real.
"I'm Trooper Wyatt. I need to talk to Officer Bannock about some men he saw back at the TVEC substation a few hours ago." She handed him her AST ID card to verify who she was.
"Thank you, ma'am," he replied as he took the card from her hand and studied it in the light. He wrote down her name and badge number on a piece of paper attached to a clipboard. Anyone could get a badge and uniform made up, and maybe even steal a police cruiser. The pipeline was one of the nation's most valuable assets. Terrorism was not just something they heard about on TV. It was a real threat to these guards. They double-checked everything and everyone. He handed the card back and pointed into the gated compound.
"Over there is the watch room. Bannock is on duty at the cameras right now. I'll phone ahead and let him know you're coming."
"Thank you, sir," she said.
The officer stepped back to the guard shack, and the electric motor of the chain-linked gate slowly pulled the barrier open. Once it was wide enough, Lonnie snaked her cruiser through a couple more concrete barriers squatting silently inside the fence. She made her way over fifty yards of open area to the small, corrugated metal building the gate guard had pointed out.
Trooper Wyatt opened the door and rose from her cruiser into the cold evening air. Her left hand habitually adjusted the flashlight and nightstick in her utility belt as she straightened. Lonnie's right hand rested briefly on the butt of her pistol as she scanned the surrounding area. Starting from the guardhouse to the left and behind her, her eyes ran over everything she could see until they came to rest on the door of the building nearby. She turned from the vehicle and pressed the record button on the small digital recorder kept in the right breast pocket of her parka. She always recorded investigative interviews.
As she pushed the car door shut, a figure appeared in the entry of the building. Bright light from inside silhouetted the shape in dark shadow. The man appeared massive and intimidating. As he stepped forward onto the landing, his features came into view . At first they were hard, tough looking but suddenly softened and Lonnie could see a smile come across the big man's face as she approached. He was in his early forties, stood about six feet tall, and sported a military style crew cut and a very muscular physique. His arms bulged at the seams of the blue uniform shirt. The protective vest the security officer wore strained against his thick pectorals. Lonnie thought the guy must spend every spare minute of his time lifting weights.
"Well, now," said the officer in a flirtatious voice, holding the door open for her, "if I'm going to be interrogated by a trooper, you are probably the one who will get all the information out of me." He chuckled at his own words.
"Are you Bannock?" Trooper Wyatt asked.
"Officer Charlie Bannock, Doyon Security Services, at your service, ma'am," he said with a flourish of his hand, ushering her into the lighted building. "And you are?"
"Trooper Wyatt," she replied in a flat cold voice.
When Lonnie first started her career in the Troopers, she had been told that her looks might be a difficulty for her. Her instructors warned that she would be constantly flirted with and harassed. Initially it had bothered her, even intimidated her, when suspects and officers alike would hit on her. They often assumed her too pretty to be strong. She eventually learned that her appearance could also be a powerful asset.
By any standard of beauty in almost any country or society, Lonnie Wyatt was stunning. She learned to use her appearance to her advantage when necessary to coerce a suspect or informant to give every bit of information they had to her. With a simple angle of her eyes and tilt of the head, she could soften her expression to the point where most men were hypnotized by her gaze. Some men were stronger, and others were just jerks who didn't take her seriously until she had to use physical force. Physical force was something at which she was also quite adept. Lonnie was a 4th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and 3rd degree in Hap Ki Do.
Only two weeks earlier, a suspected meth dealer had tried to grab her gun during a warrant arrest. He quickly found his arm in a very unnatural position and could not explain to the medics how his face had been so badly bruised.
And, as with many Northeastern Asian women, she had the ability to make her face appear extremely cold, even cruel, just by going expressionless and staring into a person's eyes. Lonnie had become quite adept at scaring the willies out of almost any person with a well-timed icy stare.
"I understand you met a couple of suspicious people earlier this evening at the TVEC substation?"
"Wow, you like to get right to business don't you? My kinda girl." He smiled.
"Look, Officer Bannock," she started.
"You can call me Charlie." A grin spread across his face that Lonnie thought seemed oddly uncomfortable to him.
She looked at him with cold, hard stare, accentuated by her stoic Korean features. "Fine, Charlie. I don't have time to waste with flirting." She put her hands on her hips and assumed an aggressive stance. Her voice was sharp. "You don't have a chance with me. Let's get to business so we can catch these guys."
His face flushed red with a boyish look of embarrassment. "I'm sorry," he stammered. "I assume you're talking about the two Albanian guys?"
"Yes, tell me everything you saw to the best of your recollection. I also have to let you know that this conversation is being recorded," she said.
Bannock motioned to a rectangular folding table with a single metal chair on each side. He walked toward it, then sat down and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, spreading his hands and tapping the fingers of one against the fingers of the other.
As he gathered his thoughts, Lonnie took a quick look around the room. It was about fifteen by twenty feet, with plain white Sheetrocked walls. Behind the chair farthest from her was a window through which she could see outside to the guardhouse at the entrance. The guard who had let her in was sitting inside the small booth, smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback book.
Behind Bannock, along the long wall that stretched the whole length of the room, was a desk-height shelf covered in a series of computer printers, monitors, and CPUs. A short metal rack on the floor at one end contained a single device about the size of two pizza boxes stacked together. The IBM logo stood out on the front cover of the device, next to several two-inch-wide by four-inch-tall vertical rectangles that filled the rest of the front surface. It looked identical to a device in the computer network closet at the Public Safety building that was used to store video from the cruiser cameras at the end of each trooper's shift. She remembered the IT guy calling it a NAS, which stood for something she couldn't remember. Its real name was totally lost on the troopers in the office, who referred to it as the NASAL Server.
On several of the monitors, she could see color images being fed in from surveillance cameras around the compound. One of the cameras showed the entrance gate and part of the courtyard of the TVEC station.
"Right," Bannock said. "Well, here is what I saw." He explained everything in detail as he had with Eugene earlier in the evening.
"So, you were suspicious of them, based on a feeling you had?" she asked.
"Not just a feeling, ma'am. I spent twenty-two years in the Army, seventeen of those years in the Green Berets and the Delta Project. I hunted terrorists around the world or trained the armies of other countries how to hunt them down. After a while, you begin to have a sixth sense of sorts. It's what keeps a guy alive in that crap."
"As a cop, I can't make an arrest on suspicions and feelings," Lonnie replied. "I need facts, hard evidence of criminal behavior. Otherwise, we're just wasting our time. It's not a crime to speak Albanian."
"Look, these guys were up to no good, whether they work for TVEC or not. I'm telling you, based on my experience, that they're connected to terrorism. That's it, plain and simple. Take it or leave it."
"I understand your professional opinion, and you may be right. But it won't hold up in court without hard evidence. And if it won't hold up in court, I have nothing to take them in for...plain and simple," she said. "If you don't have anything substantial for me, then there's not much I can do." She glanced over to the network equipment and the bank of monitors. "Do you have any surveillance video of the substation?"
"No. This equipment is all new and hasn't been fully installed yet. Besides, the substation isn't our property. Eugene Wyatt from TVEC just gave me permission a couple of hours ago to install some cameras there. I should have them in place tonight."
"If you see anything else suspicious, give us a call and we'll follow up on it."
"I'll look through what videos I do have, and if there is anything worthwhile, I'll contact you," Bannock offered.
"Thanks."
Lonnie stood from the chair. Its chrome feet scooted across the floor, causing the chair to vibrate with a sharp metallic clang. She turned toward the door to leave. Bannock called out to her before she got all the way across the room.
"Um, Trooper Wyatt. I... uh...." he paused nervously. "Please forgive me for the way I acted earlier. When Harry called up and said a hot-looking lady trooper was coming up to talk to me, I figured he was joking and it was some big, mean, butch woman. Seeing you kind of threw me off. I mean, you are a heck of a lot more attractive than any cop I've ever seen, and, uh..."
His face turned deep red. "Aw crap! There I go again. I'd better shut up before I put my foot all the way down my throat."
He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead in exasperation and continued. "I've never been good at flirting. I'd always get too nervous and end up gabbing to the point where they just turn and leave. I think I need to get a different social life. Anyway, won't happen again."
"Don't worry, I'll take it as a compliment." Lonnie opened the door and started out. She turned back to him and added, "If it makes you feel any better, I'll delete the flirty parts from my report. Good luck with your social life, Charlie."
"Thanks," replied the still-blushing Bannock.
She walked out the door, crossed the parking area, and got into her waiting cruiser. Three minutes later, Trooper Wyatt pulled up to the locked entrance of the TVEC substation a hundred yards south of the pump station. The low-frequency hum of the massive transformers vibrated softly through the night. Her body shivered involuntarily as she rose out of her cruiser. Even though she had been outside at the pump station, it seemed much colder here. The giant halogen lamps that lit the area near Bannock's guard shack must have raised the temperature several degrees. Here in the shadowy darkness of the electrical substation, with only the single cold mercury lamp inside the compound, the atmosphere was icy. The inside of her nose felt frosty when she inhaled.
Lonnie scanned the area in front of the gate for clues. She pulled the long Maglite out of her utility belt, switched it on, and twisted the cap of the lens so the beam spread wide, brightly illuminating the gate area before her. The gate was set in an eight-foot-high fence rimmed with barbed wire that jutted out from the compound on angled metal posts. The wire was intended to keep vandals out. Someone had, it seemed, played a practical joke by throwing a pair of shoes tied together at the laces up onto the wire. The white-and-blue Nike basketball shoes hung motionless in the cold night air.
Lonnie observed several sets of impressions left by truck tires that ran in and out of the fenced courtyard. The gate itself was closed, and she pulled on it to verify that the locking system worked. It did not budge at her tugging. She randomly pressed several buttons on the digital keypad and tried again. It did not react. Whoever had gotten in here earlier either had the combination to the lock, or had overridden the electronic device with technology. As far as she could tell, there were no signs of foul play or break-in at the gate or the surrounding fence. Other than those that led from where the various trucks had parked to the keypad, there were no footprints, either. At least, there were no human footprints. A single line of dog paw impressions trailed off through the snow into the woods.
Probably Penny.Daddy takes that dog everywhere.
She picked up her cell phone and called the TVEC dispatcher on duty to request the number combination for the keypad to open the locked substation gate.
A male voice answered. "TVEC Dispatch, this is Franklin. How can I help you?"
"This is Trooper Wyatt from AST. I'm at the Salt Jacket substation. Could you or someone there supply me with the code for gate?"
"Good evening, ma'am. What is your badge number, please?"
"Four three oh seven," she responded.
"Thank you," he replied, "and what is your full name?"
"Lonnie Wyatt."
"And, finally, one more question." The dispatcher paused for a moment. "Who was your eleventh-grade English teacher?"
"What?" She exclaimed incredulously
"I am sorry, ma'am, but I need to know this information." Franklin's voice was serious, but Lonnie was certain she could detect a hint of a grin in its sound.
"Your mother! Mrs. Eckert," she blurted out.
"That would be correct, ma'am." Franklin replied. "She'll be delighted you remembered."
"Franklin, you're enjoying this. I can tell. Now, how about the number?"
"No problem. Six, six, eight, pound, seven."
"Thank you," she said sarcastically. "Tell your mom I said hi, and you can also tell her that my writing skills have improved considerably. Hers was the only class where I ever got a B."
"I'll let her know. Have a good evening. Out here." He hung up the phone.
She pressed the disconnect button on her cell phone and punched the code into the keypad located at the side of the large sliding gate. The buttons of the keypad were stiff to the touch. The cold in the metal sucked heat out through her leather-gloved fingertip, leaving a mild stinging sensation. The lock clicked open as the last digit was pressed, and the gate automatically slid along the grooved channel of steel track that ran parallel to the main fence until it was fully open. She walked into the inner area of the substation, leaving her cruiser parked in front, still running, the doors locked.
With the flashlight in her hand, Trooper Wyatt scanned the open ground around the large steel structures that hummed with the awesome pulse of millions of volts of electricity surging through the thick rolls of copper coil and heavy electromagnets. In the diffused beam of her Maglite, she could just make out the tall, gray metal towers on which the power cables hung, feeding the substation, which converted some to lower voltage for local use, and boosted some along to further journeys to even more remote locations.
The snow had been scraped to the sides of the area in front of the small utility hut by a snowplow several days earlier leaving bare icy dirt and gravel that provided virtually no clues as to how many vehicles or people may have been there. At the steps to the hut, where there were two or three inches of snow the plow couldn't reach, were several sets of footprints.
One of the sets definitely belonged to her father. They had the peculiar shape and pattern of the custom-made White's Alaska Boots he had worn since she was a little girl. He had bought the boots for more than two hundred dollars back in the late seventies and had them rebuilt every two years for about a quarter of the price of buying new ones. He claimed those boots had become more a part of his feet than his own toenails.
Another set of prints had the distinctive markings of Corcoran military issue jump boots. Those, Lonnie thought, must be Officer Bannock's. One set of prints belonged to a pair of large, military surplus white bunny boots commonly worn by many Alaskans this time of year. Another that looked like sneakers of some sort. Each of these pairs of prints went into the building and around the various structures of the substation, where the technicians had been trying to diagnose the outage.
Standing out from the assortment of shoe prints at the door were two matching sets of patterns that bore the company logo of Sorel Mukluks impressed in the snow. The edges were sharp and crisp, indicating the boots were fairly new, or at least seldom worn. As she ran her light along the ground at the side of the hut, the imprints of those two sets of boot prints continued on toward the left of the tiny building. Lonnie pulled out her digital camera and snapped a couple of quick pictures. The flash exploding in the night briefly put a dancing array of spots before her eyes.
After taking the pictures, she followed the footprints around the building to the large steel electrical structures behind the hut. The footprints stopped in the snow about five yards behind the hut. The snow was packed in front of a large, squat, cubicle transformer. The prints didn't go any further, but followed the same way back out from the deep snow. The wearers of the Sorels had only been interested in the one piece of equipment that hummed in front of her now.
Her senses leaped to full alert. Lonnie froze in her tracks. She had the uncanny feeling that eyes were staring at her. Her hand slid to the pistol at her side. Her own eyes widened reflexively as they tried to take in all the available light, to find the source of her sudden wariness before it found her.
To her right, a flash of movement exploded from near the transformer box.
She whipped the 9mm Glock service automatic from the leather holster on her hip, and in one smooth motion, raised, aimed, and clicked off the safety. The Maglight's beam illuminated figures moving fast across the substation grounds.
"Freeze!"
Two tall, thin snowshoe hares stopped in their tracks. White fur bristled all over their bodies, and their long ears poked straight up into the cold night air.
Lonnie felt heat flush over her face, and she was very happy that Bannock had not decided to accompany her to the substation. She shook her head at her own jittery behavior.
"Okay, Bugs Bunny and friend...carry on."
The two hares watched her for a moment longer, then ducked under the fence and disappeared into the woods.
She ran the beam of the flashlight up the side of the structure where the footprints stopped. An area of frost had been disturbed on the steel casing inside, which buzzed a massive magnet wrapped in high-voltage copper coils. A twelve-by-twelve-inch square about five feet above the ground was discolored, slightly but noticeably in the beam of the Maglite. It looked like something hot had been pressed onto the metal, causing it to bake.
Toward the bottom of the transformer, the square edge of something metallic stuck up through the snow. She reached down and picked up a hollow metal box, about two inches thick and one square foot in size, with a sign plate on one side identifying the company that had manufactured the transformers. It fit the singed square spot on the side of the transformer. There were no screw holes or weld marks on either the box or the transformer. The panel seemed to have been attached by some sort of adhesive. The box Lonnie held in her hand was not discolored, as the transformer was.
She put the box back on the ground where it had been, then snapped several pictures of it, the transformer, and the square burned area. She made her way back to the cruiser outside the fence. Exhaust billowed from the rear of the car in a white cloud that stood out against the darkness.
It was 10:40. The Salt Jacket General Store closed at 11:00. Lonnie needed to get over there if she hoped to talk to Linus about what he had seen. She pushed the close button on the keypad at the gate, and the large metal fence slid itself shut. She lifted her car's remote control from her jacket pocket and pressed the button with the padlock icon. The lights on the vehicle flashed in response, followed by the audible click of the locks releasing. She opened the cruiser door and climbed in. Lonnie took a deep breath of the warm interior air, gave one last looked around through the windshield, then picked up the radio handset and pressed the talk button.
"Dispatch, 7-23" she said into the microphone, then released the talk button.
"7-23, dispatch. Go ahead."
"I'm en route to Salt Jacket General Store."
"Copy, 7-23 en route to Salt Jacket General Store. Twenty-two forty-two."
"7-23 out."
"Dispatch out."
She put the radio handset back in the clip on the dashboard, then put the car in reverse and pulled a backwards U-turn in the parking area. Once the vehicle faced Johnson Road, she put it in drive and moved out toward the Richardson Highway.
Ten minutes later Lonnie parked her cruiser in front of the Salt Jacket General Store. She got out of the car, pressing the record button of the digital recorder in her pocket as she moved. Her boots clomped noisily on the hollow wooden step in front of the door. Lonnie opened the door and went inside. The bell jangled the announcement of her entry.
Linus was leaning into a mop that he dragged from side to side over the floor at the far end of the store aisles. He turned around at the noise.
"Good evening, officer. You're just in time. We close in five minutes."
"I know, Linus. I'm here on business." Trooper Wyatt removed her hat.
He straightened and squinted across the length of the building. "Lonnie?"
Linus stood the mop against a rack of shelving and moved toward her, wiping his hands on a clean white towel that hung out of his back pocket. "Lonnie Wyatt?" A welcoming smile spread across his face as he drew closer and verified that it really was her.
"Two members of the Wyatt clan in a single day. We really are lucky. I only just heard you were back. You'd been stationed in Galena until recently, right?"
"I was," she replied. "I had put in for Fairbanks last year and finally got it two months ago."
"Well, welcome home. It's kind of weird that you drew patrol out here tonight. We were just talking about you a couple hours ago."
"Oh?"
"Yeah," He shifted his feet uncomfortably, realizing his mistake too late. "Marcus is back. He's retired from the Marines."
"That's part of why I am here." At the mention of his name, her stomach quivered. She found herself trying desperately to maintain a professional demeanor. "I need to talk to the two of you about some customers you had earlier this evening."
"You mean the Tangos?" he replied.
"Tangos?"
"Tango. It's what we called them in the Army. T for terrorist."
"I see. Could you please tell me what happened, and how they interacted with you and Marcus?" She spoke with a cold voice that was all business. "By the way, I am recording this conversation."
"Well, here's the way I remember it." He related to her the story of what happened and that Marcus had been able to understand what they said in Albanian.
Lonnie made a show of listening intently as he spoke. Behind her hard exterior, her thoughts dissolved into a scattered cacophony of memories as images of Marcus again poured into her mind. She barely heard Linus speak. She would have to rely heavily on the recording when she got back to the office.
"That's all I have about them," he said as the narrative ended.
"Thanks, Linus. Did Cara see them?"
"No. She was in the back with the kids."
"All right, then, no need to bother her."
"I assume you'll want to talk to Marcus as well."
"Yeah, I do. Where's he staying?"
"Back at his granddad's cabin. But I don't think he's home. While he was here earlier, he got a call from a friend in Moose Creek who was repairing his granddad's old hunting rifle and made a trip out that way. That was about seven o'clock. He probably won't be home till pretty late. The friend over there has a little brewery going, and Marcus is a stickler about not getting behind the wheel if he's even smelled alcohol. Then he's taking off into the bush early in the morning. He'll be running a trap line for some Air Force friend of his who got a permit to trap along the back of the Eielson training area. It's going to be at least Wednesday before he gets back, and that will be after two days and a night sleeping in the bush."
"Does he have a cell phone?"
"Nope. He doesn't even have electricity at his place."
"If you see him, tell him a trooper will be contacting him when he gets back. Don't mention me, because I don't know if I'll be the one to come back out."
"I'll pass the word," Linus said. "Let me know if there's anything else you need."
"I will."
At that, she turned and walked out of the store. Her body grew tense as she climbed back into her cruiser. She made the trip to Marcus's cabin and pulled into the driveway.
Memories flooded her mind when she saw the small log house. A wisp of smoke slowly curled up from the chimney, lit by the moon that peeked through the clouds. As a teenaged girl, she had fantasized about marrying Marcus and living in this tiny house in the woods. It had been their private hideaway as youths, a place where they planned and schemed and let their hearts indulge in one other's dreams. Now as she looked at the squat structure, shadowy and dark, she hoped only to get out of here with that same heart still intact.
The house looked empty. It was nearly 11:30. A snowmobile sat parked beside the house, but there was no other vehicle. While he didn't have a phone, she was sure he had a car. She got out of the warm police cruiser and walked to the door of the cabin.
Lonnie rapped loudly on the door with her gloved knuckles, but there was no response. She took out her Maglite and repeated the knock with its metal handle. After several seconds, there was still no movement in the house. In the center of the door was a small corkboard with half a dozen thumbtacks stuck randomly in it, Marcus's low-tech version of an answering machine. She pulled a notepad and a felt-tip Sharpie pen from her pocket and scrawled a brief note.
Mr. Johnson,
Please contact AST as soon as possible.
Re: suspects you encountered @ store 12/17
She didn't sign it. Instead, she wrote the AST direct phone number on the bottom of the note, then tacked it to the corkboard and left.
Chapter 6
Flashback
Thursday, May 7th, 1998
Stonehouse Barracks
43 Commando
Her Majesty's Royal Marine Corps
Plymouth Naval Base, England
"All right, you lot! On your feet!" bellowed Colour Sergeant Reggie Smoot in a thick Scots accent as he entered the NCO's lounge room of the Royal Marines Stonehouse Barracks at Plymouth Naval Base. The sergeants and corporals of 43 Commando rose from their various leisurely activities as the Colour Sergeant continued. "This is Gunnery Sergeant Marcus Johnson, United States Marine Corps, 2nd Force Recon. He's going to be with you all for the next twelve months on an exchange duty. He is a real Sea Daddy, with a dozen years in. He did a complete pass out of the Commando Course back in '89. He earned a right to the Globe & Buster, so don't give him no shite or you'll get a beasting you won't forget. Understood?"
"Yes sir!" came the stout reply from the twenty-some men in the room.
"Oh!" he added as an afterthought, "and don't try to confuse him with none of that Eastender gash! He is also a linguist with about thousand languages in his noggin, and he just got back from Bosnia, serving alongside a bunch of hooligans from 3 SAS. You won't get nothin' by him!" He paused melodramatically, raised his eyebrows, and shouted, "Understood again?"
"Yes sir!" came the second stout reply, this time with a few grins.
"Good! Now get your arses over here and be sociable!"
The first man to approach Gunnery Sergeant Johnson was a tall, athletically trim man of about thirty, with sergeant's stripes on his epaulets. He reached out his hand and spoke in a comfortable public-school accent. "Well, your experience with the SAS should certainly reduce the language barrier for us all. Last Yank we had in our midst spent the whole time scratching his head and saying 'What the hell?' every time we asked him a question. I'm Sergeant Barclay. You can call me Bill."
"Great to meet you, Bill," Marcus replied with a friendly smile. The others all streamed toward him with mostly warm and friendly handshakes and welcomes.
After brief introductions, CSGT Smoot called out, "All right, you lot! It's closing time for duty! First round is on the new guy!"
... continued ....
* * *
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Buy 65 Below in between January 1st and March 31st 2011 and be entered to win a new Kindle WiFi reader! For every thousand initial entries I'll be giving away a brand new Kindle 3 eReader! No limit on how many I will give away!
To enter the contest email a copy of your Amazon order number to kindle@basilsands.com.
Want more entries?
Get up to 10 extra entriesin the drawing. After the initial entry do the following:
4 extra entries: Go to www.basilsands.com and from the comment page send a comment with the answer to this question:
"What military organization was Temebe a veteran of?"
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Get four extra entries for leaving a review or comment at the purchase pages:
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