A nurse attended to Wyatt in a room across the hall from the dead North Korean lieutenant. The blow to her head had been hard. She had been winded by the fall back against the heater unit. Her body armor had protected her from any broken bones or cuts.
Other than a bruise on her forehead and a moderate headache, she felt fine. The nurse gave her a couple of aspirin and said to call immediately if she started to feel dizzy again.
As the nurse walked out of the exam room, Commander Stark entered. A frown creased his face.
“What in God’s name happened in there, Wyatt? I sent you over here to translate for the guy and he kills himself.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she replied, “I did get some information while he was groggy, but then his medication ran out and he started to swell up and spit blood at the same time, so the nurse wanted to loosen the straps. Somehow the guy came to and managed to mash me in the forehead before I could do anything about it.”
The commander stood there, staring at Wyatt. He rubbed his fingers down the length of his chin. “According to Harland, he threw you half way across the room. Then he pulled the IV tube from the unit and blew into it till his heart exploded.”
“Yeah. I saw part of it,” she said ruefully. She rose from the exam table. “Sir, he was a North Korean soldier. While he was still under the influence of the drugs, he told me his name was Lieutenant Ho Jik Hyun, People’s Army. Then he mumbled some crazy stuff about a general and something in the earth, a man named Choi finding it, and someone paying. When I asked him about Mr. Kim, he called him Colonel Kim, then said ‘get the guns’ and ‘turn off the lights’. That’s when everything happened. As the drugs ran out, he must have sobered up long enough to realize what he had said and killed himself before he could do more damage.
“Sir, he used a specific word—Juche,” she continued, “It’s a North Korean term for their religion of communist philosophy. This guy was a North Korean spy. And our Mr. Kim is his boss. And his boss is some general.”
“Damn!” Stark ran his fingers stiffly across his furrowed forehead, trying to squeeze the stress out. “Albanian terrorists, North Korean spies—this thing is getting bigger by the minute. Looks like we have no choice but to bring Homeland Security into this thing. ”
“How’s Kim?” she asked.
“He’s coming around, but he ain’t talking about anything. We’re going to have to put a suicide watch on him as well until we get this thing figured out.” Stark pulled his hand away from his forehead as if remembering something. “Those supposed land mines, by the way, weren’t explosives at all. They were some kind of electronic gadget. The CSI guys are trying to figure it out, but they are some kind of complicated computer device that no one there could readily identify. They got some ex-Navy weapons expert who works at TVEC to look at the things.”
The two got up to leave.
“Sir.” Lonnie waited for Commander Wyatt to make eye contact with her. “I think Marcus may be in this thing too.”
“Your ex-boyfriend is a terrorist?”
“No, sir, he’s on our side—that much I know. But when I was at his cabin earlier this evening, a bunch of rough-looking men pulled up and started loading weapons and gear onto several snowmobiles, the tactical, quiet kind used by Special Ops. At first, he said they were buddies of his and he was helping them on a training mission, but the feeling in the air was different. They were headed onto the back range of Eielson somewhere, and would have left about an hour before I got to town.”
“Did he tell you anything about what they were doing?”
“No, sir, but when I pressed him on it, he said t it may be related to the two Albanian guys.”
“I’m going to get the Feds.”
Training Area
Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska
18 December
20:30 Hours
Marcus led Wasner’s SEAL team on the trail until they came to the point at which he had stopped earlier that morning. The men dismounted their snowmobiles and spread out in a defensive perimeter. They crouched in the snow for fifteen minutes, weapons at shoulder-height, acclimating to the silence around them as they scanned the forest through their night vision glasses.
Wasner’s team carried an assortment of firearms, including Heckler & Koch MP5 10mm submachine guns and COLT M-4 Carbines, both with silencers attached. Two of the SEALs carried high-powered sniper rifles, one a suppressed Heckler & Koch PSG-1 strictly for use against animate targets, and the other, a suppressed Barret Model 82A1 .50 caliber. The fifty-caliber rifle uses an armor-piercing projectile the size of a man’s index finger and has an effective range of 1800 meters. It is technically (and according to international military treaties) only to be used against motorized vehicles or for breaching fortifications. It was not designed for use against flesh-and-bone creatures, like humans. This law was seldom observed on the battlefield.
All weapons were wrapped in white tape along most of their length, revealing only small patches of the black metal of the sights and receivers.
Once satisfied that no one had seen them, Marcus rose from the snow without a sound. The others followed his cue. He spoke softly into the radio headset.
“There was a sniper position up ahead earlier this morning. Be aware that he may still be there or may have moved to a better location. We should see his heat signature through the night vision, but just in case, be ready.”
The men quietly
moved
forward. Small, oblong snowshoes kept them high on the surface of the dry, powdery snow. Marcus took point. The others fanned out in two lines of seven men each, with three yards between each man and five yards between each line.
Snow glistened in the shimmering pale glow of the moon. The light reflected against the trees and sent randomly skewed shadows in all directions. They
crept
through the trees in silence until Marcus gave the signal to stop. He motioned to Wasner, in the first line of SEALS. The chief moved up beside him.
“Over there.” Marcus pointed to the left, about thirty yards in front of them.
“That mound is where the sniper was this morning. He seems to have moved, though. There’s no heat signature around it. The work site is about fifty yards past it.”
Wasner spoke into his radio mike. “Scan the area for heat—we’re almost on them.”
The team crouched in the snow. They peered through the night vision glasses, meticulously scanning in all directions. Satisfied that there was no one within sight, they rose and moved forward. They came within thirty yards of the site when the muffled sound of distant voices drifted through the forest.
A whisper came over the headsets. “Heat signature fifty yards to the left. Single person.”
Marcus looked over and saw the man in the distance. The dim yellow glow of his body stood erect, facing away from the camp. A bright white line, hot and steamy looking, arced directly out of his midsection. The snow in front of him glowed a fading yellow.
The man finished, zipped his snowsuit, and turned back to the camp. The SEAL team remained still as stones and watched him return. A voice called out from somewhere behind them, making their collective hearts jump their chests.
A figure moved up quickly behind them. He was carrying a Kalashnikov sniper rifle and walking through the snow
toward
the work site.
The man who had just finished urinating turned
in the direction of
the sniper. He raised his hand and started walking
toward
his comrade, straight in the direction of the SEAL team.
They dared not even exhale. The man moved into the midst of their group. Not wearing night vision, he had not seen the SEALS as they hunkered down low into the snow. The SEAL’s white smocks and the random twists of brush and tree branches that jutted up from the frozen surface concealed them almost completely.
The men met in the middle of the two lines of SEALS. They stopped and began a conversation in Korean.
“Comrade, why didn’t you answer the radio?”
“My batteries must have frozen. I didn’t hear anything. “
“It is time to come in. The captain has found what we came for, and we are going to leave early. He already sent Team 1 back to the pickup area with one
case
, and he is
packing
up the second now.”
“Good, I am ready to leave. I can’t feel my feet anymore. I hope those four don’t use up all the hot water before we get back to Mr. Kim’s house. It is too cold here, worse than the mountains at home.”
“Maybe, but here, at least they have rabbits and other animals to eat, not like home where the mountains are nothing but rocks. I still taste that rabbit stew.”
“It would have been better if we had some kimchi to put with it.”
“Yes, but then the Americans would certainly have found you, when your hot, spicy kimchi farts drifted into the city.”
The sniper laughed and replied, “Yes, but that would have at least kept me warm, with all that heat inside my snowsuit. Besides, it would have been a good chemical weapon, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, even better than this stuff we are taking from the Americans. Maybe we didn’t need to come here at all. We could have just told the Glorious Leader to bottle your farts and drop them on the Americans. It would burn their eyes out, then we could make them all work in factories for us until we are rich!”
The two men laughed and started back to camp together. As they walked the sniper glanced around with a pensive look.“I think a herd of animals must have come through here. The snow has been disturbed all around us.”
“I am surprised Sergeant Soo didn’t see them on his side, ” the first man said.
“I didn’t see anything, ” replied the sniper, “but I have heard that caribou move very silently. A thousand of them could walk by and you wouldn’t even know it. My uncle was stationed in Siberia in the eighties. He saw giant herds of caribou that he said walked like ghosts.”
“Maybe. Whatever it was, I didn’t see anything. But there sure are a lot of tracks through here.”
One more step, and the sniper’s snowshoe came down on Petty Officer 3rd Class Miller’s leg. The soldier’s snowshoe twisted. He lost his balance and stumbled forward, toppling into the snow. A soft grunt escaped Miller’s throat. The startled North Korean soldiers raised their weapons toward the sound.
Several hoarse puffs of hot air broke through the night and the two North Koreans crumpled into the snow, dead before they fell. Dark spots of their blood sprayed across the bright whiteness of the snow and on Miller.
Miller and the SEAL nearest him, PO1 Clark, made sure the two were dead, then stuffed their bodies deep into the snow.
“Let’s move. We’ll come back and check them for documents later,” whispered Chief Wasner.
Marcus spoke into his mike. “Wazzy, I could only understand part, but they said something about chemical weapons down there.”
“Forester,” called Wasner, “you’re the Korean linguist here. What did they say?”
PO1 Forester translated a summary of what he heard, then added, “Sounds like we know why they came all this way, Chief.”
“Well, boys, let’s go play tag with these commie bastards, said the chief, then added introspectively, “Commie bastards…now, that’s a retro kinda phrase, ain’t it, Mojo?”
“Wazzy,” Marcus whispered as he moved forward, “You are the definition of retro.”
The men moved forward quickly now, ready for an assault.
As they drew to within ten yards of the place Marcus had been earlier in the day, one of the SEALS whispered into his radio. He spotted a man in a concealed position. The heat signature of the man glowed softly from under a mound of snow.
“Jeez, that guy must be cold,” whispered PO2 Herold. “He ain’t glowing too bright.”
“Well, how about you turn his heat off, Herold, my boy,” replied the chief.
“With extreme prejudice, Chief.”
A harsh puff erupted from Herold’s suppressed Barrett .50 caliber. A fountain of flesh blood burst out of the emplacement. A cloud of steam rose from the open flesh of the corpse.
The team moved to the edge of the clearing and peered down the slope to the open work area beneath. Two men stood above the hole in the ground. At least one man was visible in the hole, and by the way he stood, it looked like another man was in there as well, below him.
All movement abruptly stopped. The darkness above them
suddenly
brightened as the aurora borealis, commonly known as the northern lights, stretched across the sky in a mystical dance of lights and patterns. All attention was drawn to the green, red, and blue glowing as the aurora spun and danced above them, spreading from horizon to horizon like angels dancing among the stars, throwing beams of colored light back and forth. A band of light erupted into motion like the strings of a thousand-mile-wide harp being played by the invisible fingers of God’s own hand.
The North Korean soldiers all stared up into the sky with oohs and aahs. Childlike expressions of wonder spread across their faces.
“All right, kiddies. Enough staring at the heavenly artwork.” Wasner whispered into the radio headset, “The Good Lord is giving us a diversion to get in position. Look for any other guards around the perimeter. There should be at least one or two more. Philips and Stingle, you guys have your Tasers, right?”
“Yes, Chief,” they both replied.
“We need to take a couple alive. Try to figure out who the officers or senior NCO’s may be and take at least one of them, if possible. But
any
one of them probably knows enough to catch
their
accomplices. Spread out around this opening and let’s wait till we verify how many there are before we jump them.”
As he spoke, a man stepped from the far edge of the clearing and walked toward the open area beneath. He spoke out loud to the others below. Forester translated softly into his mike. “Team one is away.”
“Good,” said the man standing in the hole. “Let’s load the gear and
move
out of here. We have a lot of walking to do in order to
get
back to the vehicles.”